It has been described as an epic journey of self discovery, from Cape Reinga at the northernmost tip of New Zealand’s North Island, all the way to Bluff and beyond in the far south, but as he finally came to a standstill after a remarkable one week and four days, a panting Noah Nu’kafusi told incredulous reporters, ‘I didn’t feel like running!’.
In a straight line the distance from Cape Reinga to Bluff might only be 1475 km, but the Te Araroa trail which crosses New Zealand’s North and South Islands is much longer at 3000 km, and usually takes willing hikers more than three months. Even the ultra-marathoner Jez Bragg, running with a dedicated support crew, required 53 days to complete the trail.
Yet Noah Nu’kafusi has smashed that record to oblivion, and all because of Pokémon Go. The augmented reality game, which has rapidly become a global phenomenon, was only released in New Zealand on 6 July. And on that fateful day Nu’kafusi – who began his venture with a Bulbasaur – stumbled across an egg which simply refused to hatch.
Pokémon Go tracks the location of its players, and eggs in the game are supposed to hatch after a specified distance on foot, 2 km, 5 km, or 10 km, with rarer Pokémon appearing the further you walk. However the egg collected by Nu’kafusi came with no distance attached.
He was all set to report a high-profile issue to the game’s already overburdened developers Niantic, but a mischievous friend told Nu’kafusi that his predicament bore all the hallmarks of a Mew. As players of the original Game Boy games will well remember, Mew is the rarest of Pokémon, and despite his feet already aching from a morning of cute-critter hunting, Mew proved a lure that Nu’kafusi could not let pass.
Convinced by his friend that if he only kept moving his egg would eventually crack, Nu’kafusi left his home in Kaitaia, and after circling the nearby cape headed south. Picking up speed the more he ran and the more eagerly he anticipated Mew, he took just eleven days to make it all the way to Bluff, before jumping on a boat and docking hours later on Stewart Island.
On the sparsely inhabited island, surrounded by the native yellow-eyed penguin, he received a call from his friend, who informed him of the hoax. Unlisted and slow-hatching eggs did not indicate the presence of a Mew, but only a glitch. Nu’kafusi was sad for a moment, and sat down on a rock to contemplate the wasted time and the absent Pokémon. But then he was off, as his phone vibrated and his map indicated mere footsteps to a Snorlax.
