This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
First of all let me say that Roger told me not to mention anything about candle bombs. So I won't. Friday nights should really be spent slouched on a bar stool somewhere noisy and smoky, not squashed into the back of the truck, stuck in a traffic jam that reaches from Wellington Railway Station to McKays Crossing. After two hours we finally reached third gear and were actually on our way. And so at 2.00am the truck emptied out its happy but sleepy sardines at the roadend where we all slouched off into the bushes for a few hours kip.
First thing in the morning it started to rain, but I didn’t care. It had been so long since I’d been tramping I was really looking forward to a navel-gazing, tree-hugging, wilderness-oriented good time with sixteen strangers! To hell with the weather.
After the gentle but Invigorating climb up to Umukarikari tops, we were rewarded with a view of absolutely: nothing at all. According to the map we should have been able to see Lake Taupo, Tongariro, the Kawekas, etc, etc. We'd either walked off the edge of the world or the sky had fallen on our heads. Whatever it didn’t really matter since the rain had stopped, the terrain had flattened out and there was no wind.
It was quite pleasant strolling in the clouds. it reminded me of the “Hound of the Baskervilles" type of country, . where a pack of goolie grinding smog dogs would emerge from the mists to mercilessly hunt down the unwary wanderers of the moors. In hindsight maybe I’d done too much navel gazing.
The sun came out as we dropped into the Waipakihi River and weaved our way down to stop at one of the many choice campsites. I find it interesting to watch how a party of trampers sets up its camp. The public servants will delegate anything to everybody, students will discuss everything and compromise on anything, the self-employed will go ahead and do it and to hell with what anybody else thinks, school students bury themselves in their packs and emerge when its all over to ask if they can do anything, and somehow it all gets done.
Fires were lit, meals cooked, flies erected and Inevitably we had one of those campfire conversations that covers topics as diverse as why women shave their arm pits to astral travel and out of body experiences. There was general agreement that in future there should be an astral travel trip on the trip calendar. Think about it. No cost, no transport hassles, no food to organise, no pack to hump about and you can go anywhere you like without actually leaving the comfort of your living room! I was all for astral travelling towards the nearest cold beer, but the Macaroni Cheese we'd eaten had settled like a brick and I had trouble dragging my stomach into my sleeping bag, let alone drifting into another plane of consciousness.
The moming arrived on rays of sunshine under a clear biue sky. It looked promising. So we packed and left our cheery wee campsite and wandered down the river feeling good about life, which is what tramping is all about. Somewhere along the way we turned right for the steep climb out of the Waipakihi up onto Urchin, where once again the clouds smothered us and deprived us of the view. I probably wasn’t the only one who dragged their feet on the final stretch to the roadend. The thought of returning to "Wobbly town" and work didn’t spur me into.a sprint towards civilisation.
Thanks to my fellow wandering tree-huggers, navel-gazers and astral-travellers for their charming company, chocolate teddies and candle bombs.
Punters: Toni McKnight, Kirsty Woods, Sarah Griffiths, Austin, Vicci Wharton, Alison Smidells, Leanne Wood, Chris Collyns, Gordon Seals, Brian Johnston, Allan McLauchlan, John Ingram, Gerard Galvin, Roger Bolam, Matt Comesky (scribe).