Anya had the idea to go hiking, so our alarm clock rang at six o'clock on Saturday morning. Jana took a shower, Jasmin skyped with her grandma and mom. Promptly at seven, Anya stood at the door and picked us up by car. We drove for about an hour until we arrived at the parking lot in front of the Waitakere Ranges - in the middle of nowhere.
We set off highly motivated and soon reached a platform that offered us a breathtaking view of the forest.
After about half an hour on a firm path, the true face of this hiking trail revealed itself. Everything was full of light brown slippery mud. We - still extremely motivated - were not discouraged by this, because at least one of us (Jana) had hiking shoes on, Anya and Jasmin tried to build bridges over the mud with branches and ferns.
At first, this worked quite well, but after a short time our shoes resembled the ground. We passed smaller waterfalls, streams, and very exotic plants, until Jana was the first one of us to slip, which made everyone burst into laughter. Shortly after, Jasmin lay down, but luckily both of them hardly got dirty. After four hours, we reached the first stage, a huge artificial waterfall, with water falling several meters deep. We could once again enjoy a magnificent view of the area. At this point, we also had our first lunch break and ate our packed sandwiches and crackers.
After this rest, we continued, but not the same way back. Instead, we took a smaller path that we thought would be a shortcut. Biggest mistake of our lives! The path that had already caused problems at the beginning turned out to be a mud bath, which caused Anya to fall shortly after. Just before that, she had been warned by Jana with the words: 'You slide a bit here'. Because Anya practically sat down in the mud, her appearance, Jana's words, and the whole situation, we had to concentrate very hard on the path to avoid laughing and slipping again... Of course, it happened anyway. We became more and more like mud-colored people, who must have appeared partly hysterically laughing and partly loudly screaming in a mentally disturbed way. Fortunately, there weren't many people on the trail, to be precise, we were the only ones who chose this 'shortcut'. After our nerves were stretched by extremely narrow paths on slopes and all the mud, we reached a river. However, there was no canoe waiting for us there, as Anya had promised, only water. We were probably at the wrong place. Confusion and despair spread within us. Now there were two options, either we walked all the way back, or we had to walk through the river, like it or not. Since option one was not an option for us, we chose to walk through the river.
It was cold. Very cold. And the current almost carried us away. But we survived and were very happy for the moment that we had reached the other side without falling into the water. Then came the shock. The path simply ended just around the next bend. We were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. While Anya and Jana were already thinking about the way back, Jasmin climbed up a rock and announced from the top that there was actually a way.
We walked along it for about five minutes until we reached one of the main paths and saw that this path, which we had walked for three hours and thought was a shortcut, was actually a 'dangerous track' and usually only suitable for experienced hikers.
In order to finally and quickly reach the parking lot, we asked a ranger for directions. He then pointed in the direction we had come from and cheerfully told us that this was the best way back. We laughed and thought it was a joke, until we realized that he was serious. Then we fell silent and then told him that we would never walk back that way.
He then gave us another route that was a bit more stable, but would take longer. He also explained it to us incorrectly, so we walked along a closed path and eventually realized that it would lead us back to the 'dangerous track'. We despairingly threw ourselves to the ground, we were hungry because unfortunately our food was gone (we only had disgusting rice crackers left), and our feet and legs hurt. We had been hiking for seven hours by now.
After half an hour, we pulled ourselves together, walked a bit back, and took another path that actually led us to the parking lot. Until then, we slowly climbed the endless mountains and Anya warned a Chinese couple not to go down this path, because they actually thought the path would only take twenty-five minutes and were wearing white fabric shoes. They thanked us and turned around, but not without laughing at our appearance a little.
As we finally reached the parking lot, we let out a cry of joy, which, together with our current appearance, caused confusion among the people arriving there. We felt like castaways who, after a long time in the wild, finally reached civilization. We could observe that many of the people who had just arrived got back into their cars and drove away, which might have been because of us.
Hungry and tired, we returned home. We had been hiking for a total of nine hours.
