I Don’t Like Rocks (or Water) Anymore, Pt. 2

Okay, so I left you guys hanging after saying that Rhoda got left behind. While that was happening, I was busy taking a nap (yes, I took a nap at 10am…I was exhausted from my 5 weeks of travel and going non-stop). Needless to say, I was very surprised when I woke up and went to Sally (the hut warden)’s room to ask for a can opener and I saw Rhoda sitting there!

After a long discussion about what a jerk John was, we all got into our rain gear and braved the non-stop rain. We went down to Shiels Creek just to see what it looked like. What a difference from the day before! What had been a trickle was now a full-blown waterfall with plenty of rapids at its base. There was no way we could cross it; Sally said that even the calmer crossing higher up the creek would have been dangerous with that sort of water going through it. When we got back to the hut, we continued down the track for a minute and crossed the Copland River swing bridge. The day before, the water had been relatively placid and an aquamarine color rivalling that of Hokitika Gorge; now it was slate grey and raging. From there, the guys went out hunting; we stayed in the calm, dry hut.

The weather forecast came through at 6pm, and it called for more heavy rain, easing in the afternoon, followed by even more heavy rain on Monday. Essentially, we needed to be ready to hang out in the hut for quite a while. In that same radio contact from the Dept of Conservation base, a message from John asking when Rhoda was coming back was relayed, so we found out that he made it safely (as unfortunate as that was). Hopefully the food in the car didn’t rot (or maybe just his did)!

We spent most of the evening hanging out in Sally’s room, mostly discussing mountaineers and their total craziness. Sally and Tash made some cheesecake, which was total luxury compared to all of our dehydrated food! Somehow the conversation went from the people we’d seen on the track to the poo pots that they have to use when out on the ice, since poo won’t naturally decompose in a frozen environment. I think we all decided we’re glad we’re not mountaineers!

Rhoda and I hadn’t been in the hot pools yet that day–the sandflies are absolutely atrocious during the day and take a lot of the fun out of it–so we decided to brave the storm and get into them at about 11.30pm. It was absolutely pouring and the winds were blowing like a hurricane was coming in, so obviously the sane thing to do is put on a swimsuit and run (with no towel) into some hot pools. The shallow pool hadn’t filled up with too much rainwater, so it was still hot, especially next to the hot stream feeding it.

Soaking in the springs during a big storm was probably the best part of the whole weekend. We had rain running down our faces as we looked around us, looking at the shadows of barely-moonlit mountains hiding behind quick-moving clouds. It was a completely different mood to the night before, but worth every second of the freezing cold run we had to make to get there! The only problem was that we didn’t want to get out once we were in the warmth of the pool, so we ended up spending about an hour there!

The next morning surprised us. When we woke up, light, fluffy clouds dotted the blue sky–there was no rain in sight. Jarna, one of Sally’s kiwi friends, didn’t let us hear the end of it; the day before, he kept claiming that it was “just a sunshower” and “it’s clearing!” It took a day, but he was proven right.

Unfortunately, none of us really wanted to walk out, since we’d gotten in the lazy mindset of just hanging out around the hut. Therefore, after our 11 o’clock start (we had to give the creeks time to go down) it only took 30 minutes before people were asking “are we there yet?” Since we’d already walked the track on the way in, it got a bit boring, but thankfully we had a lot of company to chat to as we clambered across rock after rock and got our boots wet in creek after creek. Towards the end, people were swearing that if they never saw a rock again, they’d be happy; sarcastic comments flowed easily at every creek. “Wow, I haven’t seen water yet today!” “A creek? No way, they have those here?!” At the last creek–Rough Creek–there was a sign pointing out that the creek crossing to the car park took 5 minutes but the flood bridge took 1 hour. Vowing that we would rather drown before walking on rocks for another hour, we walked straight through the calf-deep river (which was fortunately quite even with not many slippery rocks, so very easy to get through).

John was waiting in the carpark, and as soon as we crossed the river, he started the car and backed out, expecting Rhoda to just leave the people she’d spent the last day and 7 hour hike with to jump in the car with him. She didn’t. Instead, she had a nice beer with us in the carpark–Jarna came prepared and had a cooler of Tui in the back of his truck–and then calmly told John that Jarna was going back to Fox too so she’d get a ride with him. I wouldn’t have wanted to get in the car with him either after the way he’d treated her!

Even though Ivory Towers–the only hostel in Fox–screwed up and lost my reservation, I was very lucky and got the last bed in a female dorm, so I had a place to sleep that wasn’t a tent in the rain. Jarna didn’t have a reservation either, but the manager at the hostel did his best and shuffled a few people around. He ended up getting a bed in a twin room, so he didn’t have to pitch a tent anywhere either.

After showers to get off the smell of sweat/wet clothes/sulfur from the hot springs, we went and had an amazing meal at the Cook Saddle Pub. We started off with massive bottles of Tui and a huge plate of wedges with sweet chili and sour cream, and then I had a massive t-bone steak smothered in fried eggs and gravy for a main. It tasted so much better than dehydrated food or anything else we could have cooked in our state of exhaustion!

There’s a couple of post scripts to this story as well. The first is that Rhoda confronted John about the car the next morning; he said that they were no longer going to travel together and that he was taking the car(!!). Luckily, she managed to get her money back from him, but still. What a total pillock, especially since getting a rental car was her idea in the first place and he just latched onto her in a hostel.

The other post script has to do with the business I mentioned having to sort out over the phone yesterday. I had an Intercity bus booked to pick me up from the Copland Track at 2.55pm. Unfortunately, since we could only safely start the walk at 11am, there was no way I could get there in time without flying (and I certainly wouldn’t be able to take off with my backpack on my back!). Since we hiked back with people that had cars, I got back to Fox alright. I thought about going to meet the Intercity bus the next morning to let the driver know I was safe, but I didn’t make it out of the hostel in time to do so. Anyway, I thought the bus line would write me off as a no-show and not worry about it. Not so. They marked down that they needed to look for me at the trailhead yesterday, and when I didn’t show then either, the driver reported me missing to the New Zealand police! It kind of freaked me out when I read my email and saw one titled “New Zealand Police,” in which they said I had been reported missing by Intercity/Newmans Bus Lines and that if I didn’t reply shortly, a full scale search would be launched.

Needless to say, I replied as quickly as possible letting the policeman know what happened and that I was very sorry about causing any problems. It was a good thing I thought to call my mom too, since I had given Intercity my home phone number, to warn her what had happened and that I was not, in fact, missing, since the cops called her while I was on the phone! I ended up calling the policeman, who was not nearly as angry as I thought he might be, after my mom thanked him for taking such good care of his country’s tourists and hung up. He just asked that next time I “go bush” and miss booked transport at the end to let them know!

What an ending to a very wacky weekend.