The Fellowship of the Rain    Or: There and Back Again

Once upon a time, there were five little students, who thought it to be a good idea to spend four days of their break tramping through the beautiful scenery around Lake Waikaremoana. Leo, Claudia, Britta B., Ulf and Susanne (that's me) set out one morning in the "Tunsel Express" (i.e. the car), ready to conquer the world. Unfortunately, the world decided not to be conquered by us and greeted us with rain and fog when we finally reached the lake. Well, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and so a motor boat brought us to the track entrance. During the following 4h of climbing up to around 1100 m on a more or less steep, narrow track through dense forest along the lakeshore, the rain didn't cease, nor were we able to enjoy the view. All the so-called scenic outlooks ever showed to us was a whit nothing. Also hiking in the dark with only one flashlight for five people turned out to be not all that easy. And when we finally reached the hut, we learned the truth about a great many other things: backpacks, for example, are not waterproof; Ulf obviously had his mind somewhere else (Britta?) when he packed his stuff (it definitely would have helped to bring a sleeping bag, and when you put your flash-light at the very bottom of your backpack, you might not be able to get it out when you need it); wet porches are slippery (I tried that!). At least I didn't set the hut on fire with my first attempt to light a petrol cooker. And Leo's awesome food and the gas heater did the rest to rescue the good mood and to provide everyone with at least one set of dry clothes.

The next morning we arose in good spirits, having had whisky the night before. On this and every following morning though, somebody had to put on his/her wet, muddy boots to get water for breakfast. And after breakfast, we all packed our dry clothes in plastic bags and put on the cold, wet stuff form the day before. Of course accompanied by loud wailing and discussions whether wet boxer shorts are worse than a wet bra. The day's programme consisted of 20 km adventurous tramping through the rain forest (neither rain nor forest could be denied!). The track wasn't always easy to find, in parts due to the human mind's innate ability to ignore the obvious ("the path doesn't seriously continue under that waterfall, does it?"). But everyone had a good time, ignoring the wet, discovering stinging plants by trial-and error, and laughing at the mud as a gesture of defiance. Once you reach a certain level of wetness, you don't care anymore where you step, and even Claudia who tried to cross a brook using stepping-stones soon realised the futility of that and plunged right into the water. Ulf evaluated the absurd way of building bridges: we waded through a knee-deep stream only to come to a bridge crossing a dry patch between two mud-holes. 1 km before we reached the night's refuge, we had to climb up a very steep, very long up-hill path. Rarely in history has the sight of such a path provoked such prolonged and heart-felt swearing! Since the hut had only a wooden stove and we no firewood, we soon got into our sleeping bags and played cards in the candlelight, with some more whisky. Our good night's sleep was somewhat impaired by Leo's attempt to cut down half a forest, but we still love him (although w threatened him with a separate room for the next night).

The third day was much the same: mud, water, and rain, although it got a little better and we only had 12 km to go. In spite of Britta's "flesh-blisters" and a huge tree that we heard falling across our track 5 min. before we got there, we reached the hut earl enough to have some coffee and play card without candles (bus still with whisky, of course). During the night, Claudia did a good job at preventing Leo from snoring and we awoke motivated for the last part of our mission. Also the prospect of a hot shower at night made it a little easier to get into the wet clothes. Unfortunately, we calculated too much time and arrived at the landing 1h early and had to wait for the boat. Since our legs were too tired to jump around, that was really cold! As we were speeding across the lake, the sun came out. I swear I heard it laughing at us! Back at the Visitor Centre, everyone changed to dry clothes once more (this time for good!), and we headed back home. Leo once again enjoyed driving on the 80 km of dirt road, and we all looked forward to McDonalds in Rotorua. Because none of us was willing to put on their boots again, we just went in on socks. Who cares? End in the end, we kept the spirit up, no matter how much mother nature tried to annoy us, and we decided to come back in the summer when we can actually see where we went.

sg