Friday night, 5.30pm, Wellington Railway Station. Perfect. We have infiltrated a party of climbers heading for “The Lodge”. This lodge will be a perfect base for our weekend operation. We hope this lodge will prove as comfortable as it sounds, even if it traffic reports indicate we might be in for a long drive.
Friday night, 6.30pm, Upper Hutt. A detour to pick up another member of the climbing party. The interlopers still haven’t been roused out of the van, it appears there may be space enough that they continue not to notice us.
Friday Night, 8pm, Levin. The climbers have all disappeared into a den of iniquity calling itself “Noodle Canteen”. To continue avoiding notice we split in half and head for alternative eating establishments, ensuring we are back ahead of the climbers so we don’t get left behind.
Saturday, 7am. After a short night’s sleep due to a late arrival, some generous soul is cooking breakfast already. We quickly demolish some food, do a spot of cleaning up and inch our way down the crusty ice to the van, where the climbers are waiting for us to drop them off. It appears we have been noticed.
Saturday, 10am. After a successful mutiny against the climbers in Whakapapa Village, we gained control of the van in a bloodless coup and have arrived at a car park in the middle of nowhere, somewhere alongside the “Desert Road”. We have been reliably informed that our mission will see us walking in to a “Waihohonu Hut”, and that it should not be a long time before our destination is in sight.
Saturday, 11.30am. We appear to be lost. Colin has visited several “huts” in the past, and is adamant that this is not a “hut” and that the spacious lodge with running hot water we have instead found is the mysterious Waihohonu Hilton. With this in mind, we change clothes to something more suited to the location and settle in to demolish our lunch as if we are just here minding our own business.
Saturday, 1.30pm. We are starting to doubt our directions. We have consumed two courses of food and seen only a pair of Australian trampers. Perhaps our quarry is at the historic hut? We know we are running out of time, as we should be leaving the hut already if we are to make rendezvous with C at M, but we decide that since we are here, we should continue and make a thorough investigation, to ensure we have not stopped a hut too early.
Saturday, 1.45pm. There is no one at the historic hut either. We are perplexed. So we capture our smallest member and string him up instead, just to prove that we have achieved something with our day. To ease his feelings and our confusion, we return to the new hut for a spot of dessert, deciding we can now run late for our rendezvous as we were given spurious information in the first place.
Saturday, 2.30pm. After taking our time to ensure that the change to daylight savings the other weekend was not the cause of our mission failure, we change back out of our dress clothes and leave the Hilton as swiftly as we arrived. The trip back makes us aware of the fact that there is actually a height above MSL difference between the car park and the Hilton – are we sure we are going the right way? We don’t remember feeling like we were climbing to get there, but we are definitely dropping now.
Saturday, 4pm. The van is in sight again. Luckily the climbers didn’t manage to trace us here and claim it back. We roar (gently) off onto the Desert Road again, back around the mountain to the Mangatepopo Carpark, where our next rendezvous point is.
Saturday, 5pm. There are more people at the rendezvous than there should have been. This makes us a little worried, but we collect them all anyway as they all appear to fit, before dumping one out at the next junction as we return to the lodge too late for a beer at the pub, and after Happy Hour has finished.
Thankfully dinner appears to be not far away, not that us interlopers need any after a relaxing three hours having lunch on a mission that was only successful in that it caused no further injury to Colin and included tasty food.
Sunday, 10am. The climbers have invited us to join them at the Tokaanu Hot Pools. We gratefully accept, as it’s a perfect excuse to escape the boarders vs skiers debate that appears to be ongoing at the “lodge”.
Sunday, 12.30pm, Waiouru. The debate has found us again. Save us all. We escape as quickly as is politely possible and continue the drive back to Wellington.