By Zita Keller, 10 May 2022
We met in the Hunter car park at 5pm on Friday night. Some of us needed to borrow tents - all good. We knew the gear shed code. But... a gear shed key? Shit. Quick (read: slow) drive to Newtown in peak hour traffic to get Kathleen's key from her letterbox, which she put there 20 minutes before leaving for the weekend. When I got back with the key, tents were distributed, cars were filled with copious amounts of food and we set off at about 6:30pm. Accommodation for the night was Woodville Ferry Freedom Camping, a really lovely big grassy area with toilets(!) and a barbecue. We made good use of the barbecue the next morning when we made pancakes and bacon with chocolate sauce, blueberries, bananas and maple syrup. We set off at 9:30am to drive to the Kaweka hot pools, hoping to meet Patrick, Alex and Paul there, who drove from Palmerston North. The last bit was a gravel/dirt road, windy and steep in places - a challenge for some of us, but we made it. The warden said the Palmerston North crew camped near the carpark last night and then headed off - we assumed they went for a day walk and that we'd see them in the evening (there's a hut 2-3 hours away and another set of hot pools about 45 minutes beyond that). Some of our group did a bit of walking too, some jumped in the hot pools and got a tad smashed, but we all had a good time and then regrouped for dinner... except for one, who decided to run all the way to the other hot pools and back. He was pretty quick (approx. 4 hour round trip) and was back in time for dinner. Then it was back in the hot pools (or card games for some). The stars were beautiful. A mist came up about midnight and we headed to bed. The whole time we were wondering what happened to the Palmerston North crew... later, we found out that they thought we were going to the OTHER hot pools, the ones that are 3-4 hours away - they were there, expecting us to turn up. Oops. We had a fair bit of their food too... All in all, it looks like we had a fair bit of miscommunication. Thankfully everyone was ok. Lessons learned are to make it very explicitly clear what the plan is - including WHICH hot pools!
Hot pools: 10/10
Communication: 4/10