Backpacker Anthem

Remember the intrepid German/American adventurer couple from my recent blog post? I met them on top of a mountain. This is my new favorite way to meet people. We met on the Cascade Saddle tramp. They took a photo of my friend and me on top of that Saddle. That photo remained as my Facebook profile picture for a while. I was about to hitch a ride from Wanaka to Queenstown with some American guys I had met at the youth hostel when I was greeted with the backpacker’s anthem which goes something like this: “I have seen you somewhere before, but I’m not sure where.” It turned out that on top of a mountain was where we had met before. That quickly lead to, “We are leaving at 7 am tomorrow to do the Motatapu track.” Needless to say, approximately 2.5 minutes later we agreed to meet somewhere along the gold rush-turned sheep farm track the next morning.

I had a fantastic time accompanying them along the undulating four 1200 meter tussock saddles, reminiscing about my Seattle REI days. Of course the American guy had worked there. 80% of Americans who travel to New Zealand seem to be from the Pacific North West and of those most have probably worked at REI at some point. 

Along the way, we stayed in brand new huts, still a little too new and sterile to have developed notoriety. They were paid for by Shania Twain who had purchased land and a station (cabin) near the track. To avoid the public eye, Twain paid to have a large section of the track rerouted and she sponsored construction of new huts.

I was thrilled to find the signatures of two Te Arora trail hikers I knew in the hut books. The Te Arora is a long-distance 2,000 km walk from the tip of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island. It takes 4+ months of solid walking. One hiker I knew in the hut book was a German from Berlin. (Imagine that, a German in New Zealand??... Sorry family, this sarcastic reference will only be funny to those who have started to pick up German as a second language resultant from backpacking in the land of the Kiwis where I’m pretty sure Germans are slowly colonizing one smelly backpacker at a time. P.S. All backpackers are smelly, not just the German ones.)

This particular Berliner was another with whom I had sung the backpacker anthem when we crossed paths in Queesntown. It turned out we had met 3 months earlier at a backpackers in Picton. He ended up taking my friend tramping on a one day marathon across the Routeburn when I had already booked a flight to Sydney. (It should be mentioned that this friend was visiting me from Seattle and yes, she had worked at REI at some point. See there must be a conspiracy here).

ANZAC Biscuits

ANZAC biscuits are an energy bar recipe from the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps. Over a couple of homemade ANZAC biscuits baked by the aforementioned mountain-climbing German girl, we played the “hut mate” game. Everyone must venture a detailed prediction about who will occupy the hut that night. I guessed that there would be a group of Israelis, a German couple (a cop-out guess, really), and an old mountain goat of a man who has not seen civilization in weeks. I was wrong. In place of my fantasy hut mates was a British guy with little tact in hiding his anti-American sentiment and a 60 year old solo Te Arora hiker. I’d seen him at a backpackers cooking up a rack of lamb a few nights earlier. My hut mate prediction was totally wrong. But the point is, Anzac biscuits are good and they are now a regular staple in my pack, right next to “survival chocolate”.