Mountain Trekies
Let's have a show of hands: How many of you out there heard about this web page from the visitor's book at the Ketetahi Hut on the Tongariro Crossing? (There has to be someone.)
Our first tramp in New Zealand was in Tongariro National Park starting on Day One at Whakapapa Village and ending on Day Three at the car park near Ketetahi Hot Springs. The Tongariro Crossing trek was approximately 23km. It was spectacular.
Five Kiwi Bushmen
The entertainment on our hike came from the five Kiwi bushmen we met at the
Mangetepopo hut our first night,
Paul the Chippie, Jono the Sparkie, Kimbo, Aron and Andrew.
They showed us how to cook up a bonzer of a pudding and taught us to speak
the way the Pig Islanders do.
It all started when we reached the Mangetepopo hut that first day. John and I were cleaned out. The sun was just starting to redden the clouds. When we finally settled into cooking tea, I looked out the kitchen window at the sky. She was gunna be a pearla boys!
"What do you want for tea?" John called to me. I was sitting at the wooden table with my feet up being a bit of a waster. "Much the same muchness to me," I called back. "I could sure go for a piss."
John whipped up a delicacy fit for tired muscles; dehydrated noodles, dehydrated peas and the zucchini we'd bought at the dairy. We squeezed at the table along with the group of Aussie sheilas and enjoyed our feed. It was good tucker. For pudding we had heaps of biscuits and cocoa. That was tops mate.
Just as John was finishing the dishes, the Kiwi blokes shanked their ponies into the hut. We all got to talking. The five of them were up in the mountains for a three days tramp. They must have really beat their feet; they'd gone twice the distance we had that day. Our conversation circled the gambit of topics from the Kiwi drivers who seem to get aggro with our yellow heap that can't go more than 90 (at least we won't get snapped) to a prize winning commercial where a Kiwi driver goes for a blat with the laundry in his ute.
After a while the hut grew dark and we lit the candles, and we lit the candles, and we lit the candles again. The door was half pie open from the Aussie sheilas going in and out so that the wind kept putting them out.
Our conversation with the Kiwis continued. We talked about our jobs and where we lived. John and I, of course, were cruises with NFA. The five of them were from Auckland. By 9:30 pm I was too zonked to keep talking so John and I said goodnight and crawled into our tent out back. In the morning we had to climb a Gentle Annie and we needed our rest.
"You'll be pie on by morning," John assured me and indeed when I woke up, I felt like a boxabirds. We set out at 8:30 after a breakie of ziff, oatmeal and a billy of hot tea. We hadn't been on the trail more than half an hour when the five kiwi blokes dressed in their Swandrys caught up to us. A quick "gidday" and "baa" and they were off like gone burgers. The Gentle Annie ahead must have seemed like a piece of piss to them. It took us a bit longer but eventually we made it up the saddle and into the South crater. It was time for a smoko.
We made it to the Ketetahi hut by 3:30 pm, seven hours after we had set out on the trail. One of the Kiwis was just ahead of me as we descended the last few kilometers to the hut. I tried to catch up to him but my muscles were screaming. I was poked. I couldn't come within a bulls roar of him if I tried. His mates joined him at the hut an hour later. They had set out to smack over Ngauruhoe. They didn't make it though; they'd been piped at the post by the rain.
"Do you want a hot cup of tea?" John asked me. "Spot on!" I said. "No worries mate, you'll be pie-on by morning," he reassured me. After my first cup, he offered another. "The night's a pup," he said. "No thanks," I replied. "I need to catch some zeds."
By 9 pm it was a stop at the dunny, a good night to the kiwis and I crawled into my scratcher. "Don't bother knocking me up in the morning," I told John and I was out like a light.
Looking back, I'd say that my first hike was a real cracker. It was great to be in the mountains in the wopwop. The views were tumeke and the company at the huts was tops mate.
