Camping in Paradise
It turns out that Paradise is a bit wetter than I expected.
It’s the first trip in the OUTC calendar. Once known as Freshers, the trip where budding young punters were put to the test, the beginning of a long road towards evolving into an old crusty. Nowadays the trip is known simply as Paradise, an unoriginal name stolen from a street sign a few kilometres from the camp site. Where once we had young punters in stubbies, the ranks are now filled with totting internationals, interspersed with a few keen kiwis to keep everyone sane.
Paradise 2018 started like any other, chaos. People milled around aimlessly outside the OUSA building, packs on their backs and lost expressions on their faces. Trip leaders frantically rushed around trying to herd their punters into a little group. My top priority was to race down to New World to acquire some fine boxed wine. On returning, wine in hand, it was time to load up the bus. I was volunteered to help load. After a very sweaty 15 minute workout the bus was crammed full, bulging at the seams.
I hailed myself up into the front of the bus and take my seat. I was on the road again with Jacob at the wheel, it was a good feeling. The bus trip in my opinion is part of the experience. Therefore I found it to be my sacred duty to jazz it up a little. It’s not that I didn’t find my bus companion Miriam to be bad conversation, but I just couldn’t let people fall asleep and miss the joy of the bus trip. I managed to convince Jacob to switch from the Naughties onto the OUTC Bangers playlist, from here this was my time to shine. Cue three hours of Karaoke featuring Sam, with a bit of dance mixed in. It was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone. At least I thought so. We stopped in Alexandra for dinner. Subway was obviously the cool place to be, as it was filled with smoking 17 year olds. It was here that we began to hear tales of Dan’s van, who were consuming goon at an alarming rate. It turns out that not all members of the van made it through that night intact. In fact, you could say that Julia had a wee incident on the side of the road. She lost her balance whilst peeing and ended up down a bank. She emerged after a few moments pantless and bruised from the ordeal. I later heard that she tried to get into a fight with the Patron over her ‘superior’ tent fly erecting skills.
As we approached our destination the full moon illuminated the low cloud clinging to the surrounding hills. It really was quite magical. It was raining when we got to the campsite. This made everyone very enthusiastic. I took pity on Miriam and offered to share my tent, rather than making her sleep under one of the poorly put up tent flies. It would only be in the morning that I would be able to see the dismal tent setting up that had happened in the haste of the night. Some tents didn’t have their guy ropes pegged, and one didn’t even have a fly! Safe to say I was quite happy in my dry tent (even if I later realized that the river actually undercut the bank and flowed right under us!).
Want to read about the days walk? read Walking in Paradise here!
We got back to the campsite around half past five. Hamish proudly pointed out on the road where he had hit a rabbit and squished it. The rain had stopped and everyone was thankful, there was still no sign of Lake Wilson though. We started to take down a few of the flies to hang up as a cooking shelter. This makeshift shelter was rather cosy with 100 people huddled under it.
Now came the most important time of the day, dinner time. My general idea for dinner was just to cook up some veges, add curry powder and call it a curry. Ultimately we did exactly that, boiling the pumpkin, frying the carrots and onion before adding it all together, putting in a sprinkle of spice and thickening the whole lot up with potato flakes. Surprisingly it was quite edible, which shocked just about everyone. Sadly it did not win the cooking competition but you win some you lose some. It was around this time that Lake Wilson showed up. To our amazement they had gone to Lake Wilson like we had. They had taken a detour to Routeburn Flats Hut, we then overtook them and they followed us from there. In the Valley of the Trolls they had gone up the right path and hence we had missed them entirely, it also added an hour onto their trip. The night of fine dining was concluded when I whipped out the store bought cheese cake. After lighting some candles on it it was presented to Ingeborg’s as it was her 24th birthday. It went down a treat.
With the formalities of cooking over we settled into the evenings program. That consisted mainly of far too much goon and plenty of antics. Worm wrestling in sleeping bags was a highlight, even if I did get disqualified with Jacob for ‘homoerotic’ wrestling. He insists he was just trying to thrust me off. After seeing with alarm the amount of goon I have consumed I decide to give it to as many people as possible. As the wrestling finished it was up to me to get the party started and to get down with the beats. Sadly this took the form of very embarrassing dad dancing. With my dignity shattered I decided to retire early for the night. It turns out that nearly everyone had thought I was in a coma in a ditch somewhere. That being so, no one went looking for me. Glad I can rely on my fellow trampers.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the bush box blasting away. I felt surprisingly fine in the head for the amount of wine I had consumed the night before, although I ached all over from worm wrestling. Everyone was quite surprised to see that I was not in fact dead in a ditch somewhere. I made porridge for the group and then proceeded to procrastinate from putting my tent down. Eventually I had to as we were going to practice river crossings. I can’t remember who gave me the idea but instead of river crossing I was set on aquanauting down the river. The only problem was that Beth had deflated the aquanaut and the pump was broken. Bummer. I spent the next 15 minutes blowing it up with my mouth, was not the most exciting time of my life that’s for sure. I went down and took a few photos of the river crossing downstream. I figured that if I did get in trouble someone would pull me out.
I get the warning that we’re leaving soon so I hastily bundle up my craft and race upstream. I launch in a relatively shallow area and manage to smash into every rock I could find in the river. My tail bone still isn’t quite the same. Once I was in the current it was fun, although by that time I was already approaching my exit point. It took some furious paddling to get back over to the bank. My exit onto dry land wasn’t exactly graceful either. The aquanaut was shoved under the bus and we were off.
Soon it was time for the ritual swim in Wakatipu. Clothes were shed and we were soon in the cold clear water.
I started out on the aquanaut but soon discovered it was far colder being out of the water than in. Everyone messed around here, some drifting far out beyond earshot. Eventually my body tired of treading water and I called out that we should all go back. Not an easy feat when you’re struggling to keep your head above the water.
From here it was a pretty sleepy boring bus trip back, nothing really exciting to write about. All in all, Paradise 2018 was a success, even if it was rather wet.
