Ragland, New Zealand

The rain came down.  And down.  Not hankering to remain in the quickly-becoming-dreary campground, we headed up and around the Coromandel peninsula and then down towards the western seaside town of Ragland.  The sun shone, moods adjusted, and suddenly we were up in spirits and adult-proofing the giant trampoline at the campground.  

We took advantage of the 75 degree weather (yeah, that’s like 24 Celcius) and climbed what could be described as the Hike of Death.  No seriously, we transformed into real mountaineers and loved it - the prime difficulty was the steepness.  After almost two hours of straight climb (we’re guessing but that had to be 100+ floors) we wobbly slid back down.  There were even points that required rappelling over rock cliffs with a steel chain.  The scenic views of the gorge, ocean, and fields of ferns were, however, more than enough reward for our discomfort.


  

Lesson 1: The word “tramping” in Kiwi English means “hiking”... you can see how this could be confusing.

Lesson 2: When hiking in New Zealand, you are advised to wear your hiking boots.  Old tennis shoes with no traction or ankle support are ill equipped for these hills. 

On our return to the campground, we noticed two exhausted 20-year olds attempting to hitch a ride down the gravel road.  They had clearly just completed the same hike (we didn’t look much better).  “Why not?  They look normal,” Ken assessed.  Pulling over to the side of the road, we learned they were Swiss and looking for a lift to their hostel a few miles downhill.  “Ok jump in,” Ken shouted as he opened the back door for our new pilgrims.  Don’t worry Mom and Dad: we won’t pick up anyone who looks sketchy (or as the English say, “dodgy characters”).

Lesson 3: When providing a lift to hitchhikers, ensure they are from Switzerland.

On another note, we’d like to provide our readership with a selected index of words from our expanding lexicon:

Lesson 4: New Words for Americans to Adopt

Cheers! = thanks, see you later, yeah ok, alright

Dodgy = sketchy, questionable, outside normal (think: hitchhikers)

Trainers = tennis shoes (as in, what not to wear tramping up a mountain)

Take away = to go food

Muesli = every nation in the world believes hungry white people love this granola cereal

Pudding = dessert (not vanilla or chocolate gelatin-dairy goodness, but rather anything sweet served after a meal)

Proper = correct or to your liking, as in “proper bed,” “proper sandwich,” or “proper pudding” (that last one is a two-fer for ya)

Kip = nap

Chips = french fries (although we were slightly confused as people interchanged the word “chips” for potato chips - we were always like “you mean fries?”)

Bloody = actually, we don’t like this one.  It is sort of disgusting really and doesn’t mean anything.  Scrap that one.

Now make your own sentence:  We went tramping up a bloody mountain in our trainers with sketchy hitchhikers when all we wanted was a proper kip and then a takeaway lunch of muesli and chips followed by some pudding.  Cheers!