You will find lying on the bed enjoying the sunshine penetrating through your window during the day after a long trek is the happiest thing. This is exactly what I feel today. What happened in the last few hours echoes in my mind again and again though I cannot even tell if it really happened to us. Yesterday is such a comparison that I do feel it is only a dream which cannot be real. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone with such feelings among all the seven of us. I never waste time writing anything about my mood or views of my past journeys and then upload to my wechat moments or facebook. However this time is an exception, Cauz it’s so impressive and striking that I won’t forget forever.
Thank goodness that we are still alive after so many things taking place in the recent past few hours. In spite of what happened, this tramp is indeed a wonderful experience. I do thank Michael who organized this tramp and led us out of strand with his rich experience ,courage, kindness, energy, wisdom(and any other good words I can remember to describe a great leader) and professional gears for outdoor activities. Meanwhile Ido feel sorry for lady Geraldine whose arm was hurt quite seriously and Zeal who missed the plane back to China. As to Zeal, I feel sorry because it’s my fault not to explain to you our plan in detail in advance, which led you to make a wrong decision. But what I also want to say here is- let the bygones be bygones and you will have new start soon. Hope everything goes well with you in China.
We arrived and parked our cars at around 10am o’clock at the entrance to our planned track route(Chateau Mosquito Track) which is somewhere 4-5 kilometers from the intersection of Piha Road and Anawhata Road. 
But when we found the planned track was closed to protect Koala trees, we changed our plan and decided to tramp on another route whose entrance was just across the main road. After studying the paper map, we decided to cross a small mountain and then tramped along a creek down to the sea beaches from where we could walk back to our cars.
We departed a taround half past 10 am. The small mount was covered by various kinds of plants which I could not name and there was no normal path down or landmark to the creek. I did feel at that time that never ever had been any visitors tramping this route. We crossed the mountain to the creek easily with less than half an hour. The creek was long and wound all the way down to the beaches, then to the sea. At first,we all didn’t want to soak our cloths in the water, so we tried to walk along the bank of the creek. Especially Zeal, who had no clothes to change ,did no want to touch water at all.
Though zeal was as good as a monkey at climbing and managed to avoid the creek for a while, but it soon turned out to be nearly impossible to walk through the lush bushes. Roots, branches, long and short vegetation, etc. formed a web, stopping you from getting through. Finally we all jumped into the cold creek water, chilly as it was, to save our energy. ‘Oh,my goodness. It’s cold, it’s freezing. I cannot feel my feet.’ Icould hear them screaming. In spite of this, at sight of the clear water, blue sky, white clouds and warm sunshine, we forgot the chillness and all totally absorbed in enjoying the picturesque sceneries. The first two hours’ journey was easy and full of joy and laugh. However,as an old saying goes, ‘happy time always comes to an end.’ As we marched ahead, we soon came to a small waterfall where there was a pool of clear water down under. ‘wow, it’s beautiful. It’s so amazing.’ We could't help screaming again. most of my teammates detoured for fear of drowning . 
The water under was crystal clear, Cauz I could see tings clearly under the water. Somewhere it was deeper than my height, but I decided to swim across the waters. I was lucky that I brought swimming shorts with me ,so I swam through without efforts.Before I plunged into the water, I hesitated for a moment if I should take off my shortsighted glasses and left it to Zeal. I regretted very much later I hadn’t done that. I decided to swim on a freestyle and kept my head out of water.But at around halfway, when I didn’t feel very comfortable ,I then began to hold breath under water and breathe out of water. When I did this, my glasses fell off my head and dropped in the water. I hadn’t realized until I crossed the waters ,when lady Michelle asked ‘kinbou, where is your glasses, I remember it was on when you got in.’ Now I noticed my vision was vague and my glasses was gone. ‘OMG, I lost my glasses.’ I screamed. I was at a loss for a while when Michael recommended we had a rest and took some snack while waiting for the water to become clear. I swam and walked in the waters, so it became too dirty to see anything in the water.Time ticked away quickly, It was nearly one and a half in the afternoon, We waited for nearly half an hour impatiently.The water was still dirty. We clearly knew the potential danger if we waited there any longer , so I gave up the glasses and told everyone ‘No worries, guys!Forget it, I have a spare one. let’s head on.’ Though I said this ,I really had no idea if I could still find my spare glasses which, at first sight, reminded me of a traffic accident years ago on the motorway. I don’t want it wear it at all, cauz I always associate it with bad luck. 
But at this stage, I have to encourage others to move on. ‘Are you okay without glasses, can you see?’ Lady Geraldine asked considerately. ‘No problem, my short sight is not so serious.’ I replied. To show I was really okay without glasses, I intentionally walked ahead of them. To be honest, my vision was quite limited. We tramped continually ahead as the creek water flowed until a branch scream popped up on our right hand side and joined the creek that we were in from the right. Then Michael, our leader, stopped to check the map and pointed out our location for us. According to the map, we were somewhere in the middle of our journey, Having a look at the watch, it was nearly three O’clock. We carried on our journey and arrived at another waterfall roughly ten minutes later. 
Gosh, it was really a gorgeous waterfall. ‘Woops, it’s gorgeous.’ We all couldn’t help exclaiming.The water flowed from the top all the way down to the bottom which was around10 minters under. The waters down under looked clear and deep enough to jump from the cliff. It suddenly reminded me of scenes in some Hollywood adventure flicks in which people jumped from the top, when the heroes or heroines survived, but the followed villains fell down on the hidden rocks in the water unluckily and died immediately. Movie was just a movie which was not real, we couldn’t risk our lives to do such a stupid move here as jumping from a nearly 10 meters’ height. Looking around, within vision can reach, we could not find any easy path to detour. There might be more waterfalls like this one which would take a while to pass. It’s three O’clock. My plan was to get back home before 4 pm and then sent Zeal to the airport. We couldn’t afford wasting any more time. After a short discussion, we changed our plan and intended to climb up north to the main road (as we know the main road is on the north)along the branch stream we met just now. Shortly after, However, we failed again when we found another waterfall ahead of us and what was worse was that Geraldine fell down on her shoulder when she climbed up. Luckily, she could still walk on her own. 
We were very dismayed at this time, cauz it meant now the only safe way to get out of the bushes was to go back along the way where we came. This was the last thing we wanted to do to see scenery that we had seen. But for the sake of safety and equality, we took kiwis’ advice to vote to make a decision. The result was obvious: we all choose to go back. It seemed here was a turning point of our happy journey.
At around three and a half, we began to march back. We were not as joyful as we had been in the returning journey. At first the major reason was Zeal’s flight which took offat 10 pm. If we couldn’t manage to get out of the bushes before 7:30, there was a very large chance that he would miss his plane. 
So all of us were in quite a hurry and walked much faster than in the morning when we had nothing to worry about and stopped to take photos whereverwe wanted to. My friends and me walked ahead while the two ladies walking behind. Geraldine’s shoulder ached badly, so Michelle walked with her to take care. Michael was in between, I thought he both wanted to keep an eye on the lady and make sure we four guys were within his vision as well. It was not long after we made great efforts to detour the first waterfall we met, when I heard Geraldine screaming ‘ Ouch, my fucking arm, my right arm was hurt again!’. I looked back and quickly learned that Geraldine fell down and hurt her right arm again; Michelle was lifting her left arm to stop her from sinking. But Geraldine was to heavy for Michelle, I could see Geraldine was sinking slowly. Without hesitation, I ran back as fast as I could to them ignoring my steps in water. With my two hands lifting Geraldine’s hip ,we successfully kept her above water. She looked pale and nearly passed out. ‘Michael, come and help, I can’t move my arms.’ ‘Oh, my god, what can I do, I can’t move.’ Michael heard us and reached us as fast as he could. Knowing what had happened, he grabbed some long johns from a pack and wrapped it around Geraldine’s right arm.
She might have a shoulder dislocation or bone fracture according to Michael. ‘Does anyone have painkillers?’ Michael asked and looked at us one by one searching for a positive answer. Pity was that we al lshook our heads. ‘It was all my fault, I should have brought some pain reliefs.’Michael sighed. After a while, it seemed Geraldine relieved a little bit. ‘I can’t die here, I must get out here!’ said the poor lady.She clenched her teeth and tried to stand up but failed. Michael found her a stick then and with our help,she made the second effort. This time, she made it and stood on her own. It must be very painful, because I saw her frowning when making every move. To protect her from tripping over again, Michael walked just less than two meters ahead,removing all obstacles for Geraldine,;Michelle walked by her side;followed behind, as close as possible to Geraldine. 
We walked extremely slowly. It was around four and half in the afternoon; Water became deeper and freezing. I began to worry if we could get back to our cars before darkness; if zeal could still catch his flight. At times I could hear Geraldine moaning out of pain and then Michelle encouraged her ‘Darling, you are great; you made it, honey.’ .Each time, Michelle would look at me and signaled she worried about Geraldine very much. The way was hard to tramp even for a normal young person, let alone for an aged lady with serious hurt. I was sure if Geraldine fell again, she would never be able to stand up again today. We would never give up any one of our teammates. 
So, if Geraldine fell, we would all stay with her and be trapped in the bushes. The sunshine was becoming weaker and weaker and temperature dropped dramatically. Time flied, nearly two hours passed quickly.We remembered we had come from the left side of the creek, so exit should be on the north. We kept looking at our left side to look for any landmarks which could ring a bell. We soon came to a stream, which made us depressed very much. We all couldn’t remember we had noticed a stream near the exit when we climbed down this morning. Until now, we hadn’t realized we were lost in the bushes. Michael kept asking us if someone was familiar with our surroundings. We all looked at each other shaking our heads. It was nearly 6 pm. 
Sunshine disappeared silently. The creek water was becoming much colder. Glancing at Geraldine, she was shivering out of chillness and pains. Each step forward was hard for her. I thought we couldn’t crawl like this any more,Geraldine couldn’t walk too far; we didn’t know if we missed the exit; if we did, the further we moved ahead, we longer distance we had to crawl back. ‘Michael,do you think it’s wiser if you walk faster ahead to check if we missed our exit?
We go slowly to look after Geraldine? I don’t think she could walk anyfurther.’ Michael nodded. ‘Okay, everybody, I will go faster to check the exit;you just keep moving ahead slowly to keep warm.’ Said Michael. He disappear soon.
After Michael disappeared, we carried on walking ahead for another half an hour or so. Michael didn’t come back. Darkness was closing in. Water was so freezing that even though we kept moving, we couldn’t stand any more.Every body was extremely impatient and anxious.
Then I strongly recommend everyone to get out of water, changed some dry clothes if they had any and kept moving back and forth. This was better than staying in the freezing water walking towards a wrong direction.
At first Geraldine and Michelle still thought we should follow Michael’s instruction. However theysoon both gave up. 
We got out of the water and found a flat place to change some warm clothes. ‘Michael, Michael…….’ We sat there closely ,shivering out of coldness, while shouting at Michael’s direction, looking forward to his reappearance.
Michelle produced sound with her hands by covering on and off her mouth.But there was no shadow of Michael at all. We analyzed why he disappeared for so long.‘ I think there are only two reasons why he hasn’t come back.He either found the road,called the police and waiting for the police to rescue or there may be another reason- he died of fall or sth. Most probably, he died.’ Said Zeal desperately; ‘I’m gonna look for him’ . ‘Do not do that Zeal, we must trust Michael. We just stay here waiting for him.’ ‘He will never come back; we cannot wait to die.’ Zeal didn’t listen. He yelled Michael’s name while finding his way forward. He soon disappeared too. Now the situation was become worse. We have to worry about two guys.
About twenty minutes later, Zeal came back with bad news. He didn’t find Michael’s shadow atall. We all became despaired. ‘We have no mobile signal, no map or compass, we must wait for Michael. If he doesn’t come back, we have to stay here for the night.’ Said Michelle desperately ; ‘we must make a shelter in case of rain.’ She added.I looked around, meditating ‘I don’t know how to make a shelter; and I have no knife or string.’ We looked at each other helplessly expecting some positive expression on each others eyes. But we didn’t. ‘Michael,where are you; we need you.’ Pathetic Geraldine almost cried.
The temperature was cold.But I felt my heart was colder than anything. Could we get out alive? I thought everyone was asking this question silently. Just in the middle of frustration and despair, I heard sound from the water. It sounded like someone was walking in water. ‘It must be Michael., I guess. ‘It is Michael. He is coming back. Everybody turned their head to the sound. A familiar shadow was coming out of the creek.
It was Michael. Everybody became delighted; everyone was expecting his findings. Unfortunately,the news he brought back was sad too. He didn’t find the track. But we were still happy; he was our only chance to survive.
Because he had gears we needrf to survive in bushes. ‘Attention everyone, here is the plan. I remember there was a mark on a tree when we climbed down to the creek this morning. We get in the creek again and go back. When we walk in the creek, check if you can find the mark on your right.’ Said Michael.
We then turned back and searched for any clue as per Michael’s instructions. Suddenly I heard Kevin yelling ‘I find something; come over here Mark. Check if you are familiar with this step. I remember clearly we passed here this morning when we just jumped in the water.’ We walked around but dismayed again. We knew the exit was near here, but we just couldn’t find it.
I walked back a few steps and suddenly noticed a red tape circled around a tree trunk yards away from me. I had seen these tapes in my previous hiking and guessed it must be used as a landmark.
I couldn’t suppress my excitement and screamed ‘Come everyone; Comehere, Michael, I found a mark.’ Looking up ,I found another red tape on a tree about five meters away. Darkness was falling. When all others joined me, we kept climbing up following one and another red tapes.
There was a kind of unknown plants whose leaves had sharp edges cutting into my palms whenever I touched them subconsiously, leaving several deep bleeding wounds. My mates all complained they had heaps of wounds on their legs, hands, and arms too. But we really couldn't underestimate human being's desire to survive. Ignoring the wounds bleeding, the hurts aching at all, we kept climbing up with both hands and feet. Unfortunately, we soon couldn’t find any red tape any longer. It was nearly half past eight in the evening. Night fell. We could see nothing but darkness. ‘Everyone rested for a few minutes; I check the map and compass.’Then Michael turned on his torch having a look at the paper map and compass under the torchlight. ‘According to the map, the main road is in our north. Wehave to march north as per the compass.’
I have never felt so fearful and helpless. 
It was a moonless night with few stars hanged in the sky. My heart at this stage was as dark as the night. ‘We head on north;try if we can find the top.’ My thought was interrupted by Michael. My friends felt their way ahead while Michael illuminating back and forth in the middle followed by two ladies. Michelle said she dared not be the last. So I became the tail of the line of 7 wanders. Because of the darkness, we had to touch each other’s back or bag to keep in the line. On many occasions, we were stepping on tree roots or branches rather than earth. One could never thought of the danger and difficulty we were in. Marching ahead speechlessly, everyone didn’t cherish any hope to get out that night. If only we could get out alive tomorrow. ‘God bless us; god bless us.’ I kept murmuring. ‘ Do you have a family, Kinbou?’ Michelle broke the silence first with a low voice. ‘Nope, I’m not married yet.’ ‘I feel sorry for that. Do you think we can get out?’ Her voice was trembling. ‘Of course we will get out. Fortuneteller ever foretold that I would be someone in the future . So I have a future. It means I will be still alive. If I live, everyone here will live too.’ I consoled her. ‘Kinbou, you are so kind. You bring good luck to us. I trust you. ‘Come on, darling; we will make it through.’ Michelle then turned to Geraldine. Crawling like a snail for nearly two hours, we finally got on the top exhausted. After discussing for a while, we decided to spend the night somewhere flat on the top of the mount, for we knew It would be extremely dangerous to climb down the mount. It takes hours to get to the top, but it may take less than half a minute to get to the bottom if there is a cliff ahead. Looking up to the sky,stars disappeared, signaling a cloudy weather. For the time being, except for shadows of plants in the darkness, we could see nothing. Michelle switched on her mobile saying it was 11 O’clock .
We became worried about the weather for fear of rains, for we didn’t bring tent, raincoat or waterproof clothes. Coldness,hunger and thirsty were attacking us. We didn’t take much water or food. ‘beepbeep….’ What a familiar sound. We heard someone’s mobile was ringing. It was Michelle.‘I had signal; I can’t believe it.’ Michelle screamed. We suddenly saw a line of hope. Michelle answered the phone, but the signal was on and off all the time. Luckily, her mother got her point and called the police for us. The police then sent a link to us.According to the police, they could get our coordinate only if we opened that link the texted us. But the signal was not stable , it took us nearly half an hour to open it. Police then sent our coordinates to the voluntary search rescue club. Pity was that police called us again later and told us to wait until tomorrow morning and then they would contact tomorrow at around daybreak. Anyway it was definitely very comforting news that we could get help from outside.So what we should do was to make through the night. It was so cold that we had to make a bonfire though it was illegal. We couldn’t imagine what it would be like without fire. Fortunately,Michael had survive matches. We than searched around for some dry branches and got some. Adding some paper, we easily make the bonfire. It suddenly came to me some familiar scenarios in movies. They were exactly similar. 
The most recent one was a flick about a stranded group of scientists in Alaska. This flick hada tragic ending, because all the people died, with no exception of the hero.There was a very similar scenario which fitted our picture. They sat around a bonfire in the Alaska mountains. In far and near distance, wolves were howling.But afraid of the fire, wolves dared not to approach the human beings. But soon one of them walked meters away from the bonfire to pee. A wolf suddenly jumped at him and snapped at his neck. He fell down when many more wolves joined the attack. When other mates rescued him from the wolves, he had died. Luckily there aren’t dangerous animals except wild pigs in New Zealand. I then turned to the kiwis and asked if there were wild pigs here. They nodded.This led to an funny episode later. Knowing wild pigs attacking human beings , I never dared to close my eyes for a whole night. Our situation deteriorated when it rained. Though the rain was very light, we became uneasy. If the rain put out the bonfire, I couldn’t imagine the outcome. I kept looking for dry branches and added to the fire. Luckily enough, the rain didn’t put out our fire. We chitchatted nearly all the time to keep awake, but there was still a time when all others were sleeping except Kevin, Mark and me. The episode I wanted to refer to happened just during this time. Mark sat on my left while Zeal was sitting on his left sleeping. Everything was silent but our breath and our mates’ snores. ‘Ah, ah…………….’ Zeal broke the silence and was screaming like a ghost. Mark then was also screaming while beating Zeal’s back. Everyone was waken up by this horrible sound and was horrified. My intuition told me it must be a wild pig snapping Zeal’s neck when I suddenly saw a white thing jumping across. I took out a burning stick from the bonfire immediately and stuck hard at Zeal’s back. Michael and the two Kiwi ladies followed my move. When we calmed down, we realized there were no wolves at all. I then asked Zeal why he screamed. He told us he had been dreaming a nightmare, when he felt something snapping at his neck. Then we asked why Mark screamed. He said he saw an abnormally large spider on Zeal’sneck. When hearing this, everyone began to laugh. But after this we couldn’t fall asleep at all. We began to talk again. Suffering time was so hard to kill.It was around four o’clock. Time crawled. We were hungry and thirsty. But we had nothing to eat, little to drink. Till this time, only Michael still had a little of water in his bottle. Mark complained all the time that he didn’t catch that large spider which could be a delicacy.
Darkness soon came to an end when it dawned. The police told us they would contact us when at daybreaks. Michelle and Michael turned on their mobile phones in order not to miss the police’s call. During the waiting, we talked about our plan for a while. Plan A was to wait for the police who might not show up at all or came very late; Plan B was to find our way by ourselves with the help of our compass and paper map and if we fail, we waited for the police until that time. It was not long after the daybreak, the police called in. But they told us we were roughly 60 meters away from main road(in ournorth) and around 100 meters from the trek(in our south east). 
Police also recommended us to try ourselves and if we failed, the rescue team would come alittle late. Again, we voted to decide.We all preferred to go on our own to the north, because we couldn’t stand any longer and even 100 meters were too far for us. Because my friends and poor old lady were in very bad state, we recommended Michael and Kevin to go first to look for the way. 60 meters wasn’t far, Michael promised they would come back or signal us in half a hour.But before they left, Michelle still asked what if they didn’t come back. Michael told us to wait for the police at where we had been. When he intended to pass his whistle to me to signal, I refused and told him I could produce sound with my fingers. They then disappeared.
We five stayed there and tried to put out the fire. It was illegal to make fire in the bushes for it could cause serious forest fire. Pissing on it together with the help ofthe rain droplets, we managed to put it out. Disgusting as it was, we didn’t care any more in that situation. Shortly after burying the burning wood with wet soil, we heard Kevin’s sound. ‘We found the way; we found the way…..’ From his voice, we knew they did it. They soon appeared in front of us and brought us this good news. 
Where we spend the night was really very close to the road and there were no cliffs at all, which meant even though we headed on last night, we would be able to get out to the road.In spite of this, however,we firmly believed our decision was right. We couldn’t risk our life to march on to climb down in darkness. It took us less then 20 minutes to get off the mount top to the main road. When we got out, we found our cars were just hundred’s meters’ away on our right.One police arrived as soon as we got to our cars. Opening my car door, I surprisingly found my mobile phone was lying on the backseat. I supposed I lost it in the tramp. Turning on my phone and looking at the time, it was just half past eight in the morning.It was yet not late to ring my manager to ask for a day’s leave. Though there were heaps of bruise, cuts, blood , we survived at last. Till now, our adventure came to an end.
Sincerely Geraldine will recover soon from her bone dislocation and zeal will get out ofhis trauma in China. All the best wishes to every teammate in this life-threatening outdoor tramp.
