New Zealand Weekly Update #20

Last updated on August 24, 2023

6th of March until 12th of March 2023

Approximate reading time: 10 minutes

Lets get it started

I just came back yesterday from a 2 day hike with some friends. We went up to French Ridge Hut, which is in the Matukituki Valley and it was just gorgeous. Nature. Birds. Jägermeister 🙂 But I’ll tell you a little bit more about it later. I just got some new pictures form the Marathon which I joined last week, just check them out on my weekly update #19 🙂
Autumn is ahead, leafs are changing their colors, it’s getting a little colder in Wanaka. And I love it. It feels so special and great. Sometimes, I go out with some friends to join a pub quiz, a pool competition or to just sit outside of Kai Whaka Pai and having a talk with different people. And you’ll always meet somebody new, just by chance. In just one week I met more than 5 new people, with some of them I did the hike. And I met Sophie from Jena, a town where I lived for more than 8 years. This world is way too small and way to big at the same time. And especially New Zealand is way too unique to leave. Let’s talk about the week and past adventures 🙂

What’s going on in Wanaka?

Every Thuersday, there is a pool competition in Woodys, a Pub in town. It’s for free and you can win up to 50NZD in Cash (or a voucher for the Pub). And this week is was pretty busy and we met a lot of german people in the pub. After some Darts and Soccer games some of us joined the competition and tried to get as close as possible to the voucher 🙂 . And what to say, I was not able win the competition, but I ended up on the 2nd place – 50 bugs voucher for the pub – not bad though 🙂
As there was quite bad weather, I have been off for almost the whole week, so Lea and me decided to visit Puzzling World, a maze and Illusion house in Wanaka. And well, it might be not the most interesting adventure in your life, but it is quite fun. In the beginning, you enter a really strange room, everything is diagonal and your mind struggles to keep your balance. Water is running up, a chair attached to a moveable system seems to move upwards, everything is out of control. And you are not able to understand this at all. Of course you know that everything is just a trick, but you can’t handle it at all 🙂 . The next room is fileld with a lot of threedimensional looking faces. And whenever you move or pass them by it looks like their eyes are following you. It is kinda strange.

Outside of the Puzzling world there is a bog maze with one tower each on four edges. And the challenge is to make your way too all of those towers (of course without cheating). The whole length of the whole maze is about 1.5km. But most of the people need 4-5km to finish the maze (and it took us most of the time to get out of the maze 🙂 ). Pretty fun to visiti Puzzling World (especially on a bad weather day…).

Hike. Sleep. Repeat.

Time for a new hike with some friends. As most of us were off on friday and saturday, we decided to do an overnight hike. French Ridge Hut Hike. In the Matukituki Valley (you might remember this is the area where I mostly work at). In total, we have been seven people and fortunately, one of them, Thomas was able to share his cars with all of us. And since this hike is a quite demanding and stepp one (hell it is steep, fu**ing steep though), we prepared quite well for this one. Friday morning, ready to go. Sleeping bags ready, enough food, gear and, this time, some Jägermeister as well for the hut 🙂
So we made our way with the cars to the Matukituki valley, about one hour driving to the Raspberry Flat Carpark, out starting point for the hike. And then, about 16km along the river. With beautiful landscape, some water crossings, a little up and down. And huge waterfalls on the left and on the right side. Stunning nature just one hour away from Wanaka. And with good company not voring at all (which can happen if you have a flat track with a lot of distance). Short break at Mt. Aspiring Hut, some food, some energy back. One more hour to the beginning of the steep part. And we had to cross the river, shoes and socks off and cool down 🙂

And yes, afterwards, hiking up. Sometimes it was no hiking anymore. It was climbing. Climbing up, using roots and rocks to help ourselfs. Heavily breathing and sweating. And trying not to fall back or to slip away. Step by step to the top. And honestly, this hike is much more demanding than Brewster Hut (Weekly Update #18). But it is worth it. It took us almost 3 hours to arrive at the hut (after the river crossing, which is about 2km of distance).
And from the Hut you can already see Mt. Aspiring, the glaciers and a lot of waterfalls. Hiking up steep parts is always demanding and hard, but the view is worth it every single step.
After we finished our hike, it was time for some Jägermeister, some talks, some food and some card games. The hut itself has enough space for 20 people. You have to write into a logbook, date of arrival, when do you plan to leave, how many people have you been and so on. In total, we have been 14 people on that day at the hut. But Lea and me decided (and we already did before the hike) to sleep outside with our sleeping bags. And fortunatelly, we found a stone shelter, which was already ready to go. So we set up our matresses and sleeping bags and we put a tarp on top of the stone shelter be have a little rain protection. Ready for the outdoor night (after we finished the Jägermeister of course to stay warm 🙂 ).
The night itself was not cold at all but quite uncomfortable, as the stone shelter was pretty small and I was not able to find a comfortable sleeping position. Anyway, the morning was amazing as we heard some keas. Much better than a wake up call from your phone. They were sitting in front of the hut, and they are not shy at all. They are quite interested, they watch you and their whole appearance is just amazing and interesting.

After some good breakfast, a coffee and some smalltalk, we started to head back to the cars. All the way down, steep again, partly slippery. Hiking down like a little duck family, everybody on his or her own pace, without any talks, just hiking down and listening to the nature. It was kind of magical to be honest. And maybe everyone was still a little tired as well 🙂
We arrived at the car park in the afternoon and decided to have a little BBQ in the evening at the house of Thomas. A pretty nice two day hike with a lot of kilometers, a lot of elevation, a lot of sweating and a lot of unique and amazing memories. Learning of the day: Bring a tent and more Jägermeister :). If we would have had a tent with us, we would have hiked up even more to sleep at a little lake directly underneath waterfall in a little valley. And more Jägermeister is always a good idea as well 🙂

What else to say?

New Zealand is just a stunning island. It is full of hikes. Full of adventures. Full of new experiences, people and unique nature. And it is salutary. Weeks ago, I struggled, I was tired. I was empty. And it just takes a little bit of time in this country to heal. To focus on the important things in life. To get back energy, motivation, hope and fun. There is a special energy around this area, sometimes I am still not able to feel it in total or to understand it. Months go, a Kiwi guy told me something quite interesting: „If you don’t pay attention, Wanaka and New Zealand will catch you“ – well, too late… I fell in love with this part of the world 🙂

Have a great week, I hope you have a big smile in your face, love in your heart and people around you who are grateful for you being around with them. See you next week!

Your DingyInternational
Felix