Chocolate + Tramping = One Happy Girl

Sorry it’s been a while...my procrastination on an 8 page research paper has caught up with me so that’s what I have been working on since Monday.  Battling with footnotes is certainly not fun.  It doesn’t help that the paper is on a topic that I truly am not invested in: Is fashion art? Ugh!  It’s due Friday, but I just turned it in because I am leaving town early tomorrow morning! Glad to get it out of the way!

Anyway, enough of school.  The start of last week was pretty normal.  It’s been a while, but I can’t remember too much happening in Monday or Tuesday of last week. 

But on Wednesday, I may have skipped class to go eat chocolate J The international office organized a group tour of the local Dunedin Cadbury Chocolate Factory! I would have been happy to just stay inside and smell the chocolate all day.  The tour was very interesting and it was fun to learn about how the different chocolates are made and they even made us wear the ridiculously funny looking hairnets.  And throughout the tour, we were awarded with chocolate for listening and answering questions.  So we all ended up with such a sugar high!  The tour guide even poured us each double shots of melted chocolate.  So good!

Then that evening, I started planning a tramp (NZ word for hiking/camping/backpacking) for this past weekend.  I was really ready to get out into the country and mountains rather than just staying on the road and driving around, so I took it upon myself to organize a trip.  Werner was over at out flat at the time and, after a little persuading, I convinced him to go with me!  So I rounded up 3 more people the next day and planned out our route.  The final group was me, Werner (permanent resident of NZ, but from South Africa), Jordan (from Canada), Ryan (from Philadelphia), and Emma (from England).  It was a great group and really cool how we were all from different places.  I actually had never even met Ryan before, but after the weekend, we all became pretty close.  Together, we decided to complete the Mt. Somer’s loop, which is about 4 hours north of Dunedin.

So after a lot of last minute errands trying to rent cooking equipment and finding food/snacks for 3 days, we set off in our rental car Friday evening.  We arrived at the trailhead carpark at about 10pm and pitched our tent at the beginning of the trail, so we could start out early the next morning.  We knew Saturday would be a long day with the hut being about 14 km (8 hours away).  After a restless night battling the cold (we were not very smart and pitched the tent on concrete), we got up about 8am, put only a million layers due to the cold winter morning, and set off. 

However, not too far into the tramp, we quickly discovered that those extra clothes were not needed. I was the first to lead and boy was it tough going for the first few kilometers.  The trail was straight uphill, very muddy (it had rained the whole week before), and filled with rocks and roots that we had to literally climb over with all fours.  Although nobody would admit it, I know everybody was thinking “What has Emma gotten us into?” But once past those first few kilometers, the rest of the day was much better.  And even though the forecast called for a few morning showers, we had blue skies the whole weekend. 

It was fun to drive in at dark and not actually see the mountains we were climbing until the next day.  And we all freaked out at the first sight of a snow-covered peak.  Little did we know that the views only got better further into the mountains.  We even climbed high enough to be in the snow and ice, a funny spectacle when trying to walk over a drift and everybody falling knee-deep into the snow.  We also had multiple river crossings and I discovered that I have a slight fear of crossing rocks and rapids.  Give me a rock to climb over and I will do it, but rock hopping across water makes me a little nervous.  At one of the first crossings, I even slipped and fell backwards, luckily catching a branch before I landed in the water.  Lucky for all of you who were not there to witness this great act of clumsiness, Jordan took a video of the whole thing and it is now on Facebook. Glad I could add to everyone’s entertainment J But that small river was not the end of it.  There were lots of puddles or “super soakers” as we called them throughout the trail.  And towards the end of the day, we encountered another crossing, this time much larger and with much stronger rapids than the previous ones.  Initially we could not figure out a way to get across without literally wading through the water after searching up and down the area, but Ryan somehow made it across with such ease that we figured we could do it.  However, Jordan, Emma, and I still ended up with wet feet.  Luckily, at the point we were still sweaty and only about an hour from the cabin.  The river did set us back in time though and we made it to the hut at about dusk after an exhausting, but amazing, 8.5 hour day!  We also crossed a swinging bridge (max 1 person) over a beautiful and massive gorge right before arriving at the hut.

Once there, we stripped off our wet clothes, shoes, and socks, grabbed a snack, and then broke out the bottle of wine that the guys carried for us.  While the boys started the fire, Emma and I gathered water from the river to cook with and I started dinner for us.  We all ate heaps of pasta, shoveling it in our mouths faster than we could chew. We sat around the fire for a while laughing and admiring what we had accomplished that day and eventually dragged the hut mattresses into the common area so we could sleep by the fire (it’s off season, so we were the only people in the hut).  Luckily, Saturday night was much toastier for all of us compared to the night before.

The next day, we set out just before 9pm and climbed the steepest part of the whole trail.  As tiring as it was, I would have hiked that ten times just to see the panoramic view of the snow covered mountains at the top.  Incredible! The rest of the day was mostly downhill (a little hard on the knees) and set at “V Pace” (Werner was leading and his name is pronounced Verna).  I ended up in the water again after trying to cross a river using a log.  Theirs is definitely a pattern forming! But no worries mom and dad, I was never hurt.  The only injuries I, or anybody else, experienced were from a very pokey plant.  That is a terrible description, but I don’t know the name of it.  But I learned by the second time I slipped on them that it is better to fall over than try to catch yourself.  They got the better of my hands a couple times, drawing blood each time, but luckily it didn’t hurt for long.  I also proved my gullibility in believing Jordan when he told me there was a bear in the woods (there are not even bears in the country).  Anyway, with the V-pace and downhill momentum, we made it back to the carpark in 5 hours! We were all so excited at the end and proud of the accomplishment and mountains we climbed because one thing we did learn is “It’s never the top!”

We hit the road and started out journey back to Dunedin, stopping at KFC on the way home, where I believe I ate my weight in fried chicken.  I even drove part of the way back! And don’t worry, I stayed in the left side of the road the whole time.  Although I did tend to turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal because they are on opposite sides than what I am used to. 

But this past weekend was amazing and filled with so many hilarious and incredible memories.  And literally all I want to do now is tramp!  But for now, I should probably go and officially submit my paper!