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Published: January 16th 2011
So, I have now been in New Zealand for almost twenty days, and all of those days have been filled with laughter, sights, and amazement. When considering the tramping part of my journey here, an interesting and alarming trend has emerged that I desperately hope to rectify soon; thus far, we have attempted three different back country tracks, and as of now....only one of them has been successfully completed. While this isn't necessarily failing, it's impressive to see how quickly situation and health can alter the immediate plan and set forth a new adventure. This time, we were beginning a notoriously difficult track (often advising Americans away), called Dusky Sound. From the very start, the walk was very hard for me specifically as I had came unto the full effect of a cold that had been circling around several people we came into contact with; nothing major, but enough to sap my energy which apparently is helpful when tramping through the wilderness. So, day one was an exhausting seven hour walk to a sandfly infested hell-hole of a hut, where we slept shielding every part of exposed skin we could cover...and still were destroyed. The next morning came quick, mostly to leave that terrible place and continue on, but it was here the track took its turn for the worse. About an hour into the day, Chad's right knee (which already had been giving some problems) completely locked and looked to be in bad shape. Luckily, after a short rest, Chad's knee got to a serviceable point that we could hike somewhere that day. We tried to intelligently (difficult) assess the situation before us, and decided the only smart thing to do was turn back to where we started. This invented new and exciting challenges to our situation, as now we got to tramp back the same seven hours we did the day before, plus the extra hour we started that day. This track requires a boat to begin, so the plan was to simply wait at a hut by the lake we arrived in until Monday, when in theory another should bring in a new set of trampers. We had plenty of food, but still wondered how to kill the next few days. This problem was quickly answered when a group of fisherman (six people) happen to come upon our hut who were planning on hunting for the weekend. They proved to be excellent fellows and agreed to take us back to shore the next morning, where we would deal with the next problem; getting back to our car. We arrived at the dock a little past 12:00pm, and waited patiently a few hours until a nice couple from the UK gave us all a lift back to the town our car was left at. It was sad to miss out on the full Dusky Sound, however there will be future time and a trip to the doctor for Chad is our next objective. Hoping for a decent prognoses, our future plans are on stand by. All in all, this was still an adventure and I eagerly await the next.
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Zoidberg
Doctor Zoidberg
Interesting if true....
Sounds harrowing and amazing. Who's envious? This guy is. <- Somewhere around May-June...ish in 2012 I look forward to some kind of crazy adventurous travels like this. Do try and come back alive dear friend and share with me your stories, the ones I don't read about in this blog at least. I miss your face.