Week 1 / Thursday

Larissa and Julian were ready when Marty pulled up outside the shepherds hut just before 7am. It wasn’t hard: get up, bathroom, throw clothes on, done. But Larissa had woken up a little sore after what she did with Julian the day before, and she was moving a bit gingerly, so when Tui hopped out of the ute, Larissa was stretching her muscles out. She smiled at Tui and said, “I carried Julian twice yesterday – maybe not a very good idea.”

Tui and Julian threw their bags in the back, and then Larissa jumped on the towbar strut while they drove down to the house to say goodbye to Huatare and Anne who were waiting out the back. Larissa jumped off and hugged them both at once. “Thanks so much. We really do love it here. It’s just so perfect for us.” Then she grinned. “There’s even perfect spots on the wall for tying me up.” They’d clearly never thought about that. “Julian’s turn next time we come!”

More hugs and kisses, including a solid kiss for Hautare from Tui, and a group hug, and photos, and then they were gone. Until the next time.

In the ute, Larissa settled in the back, with Tui, for the first part of the trip. They’d be driving all morning, until just after lunch. Tui showed her the map on her phone, and ran through the places they’d be going through – all impossible Maori names she couldn’t pronounce, much to Tui’s amusement. Taumaranui, Ngapuke, Turangi, Waiouru, Tangiwai, Taihape, Himatangi ... what were these places? Tui relented when she stopped laughing and taught Larissa how to pronounce the names, all very regular when you knew the consonant/vowel pattern.

In the front, Julian and Marty were arguing about what Huatare had said about the price of energy, thoroughly analysing it from all angles, and Julian was looking up facts and figures whenever he was online, and emailing people at both his and Marty’s uni about that, and also about the biodiversity park they’d stopped at a couple of days before. They were right into that and ignoring the girls in the back.

Tui asked her quietly about getting tied up – how had that come about? Had she really been tied up in front of her friends? And her mum? Like, really? Larissa told her about her double header 21st birthday, and about meeting Dave and Kath on the beach, what that had done to her, and how she and Julian had worked up to that birthday party, and what it had meant to her.

“Wow,” Tui said, when she was done asking questions. “You’re even wilder than I thought! What’s the wildest thing you’ve done?”

Larissa thought about that and then said, “Really? Like really wild? You won’t judge us for it?” Not at all, Tui said. “Well, you have to understand, Julian and me, only us ever, but sometimes, by mutual agreement, we play a bit with other couples.” Tui nodded, expectantly. Then she told Tui about the foursome with Tim and Michelle, which meant she explained about the certificates. Yep, that totally blew Tui’s mind, but also, it turned her on.

Then she said, “Wow, that is way wilder than I imagined. Is there anything you won’t do?” Larissa told her about their rules for other people, and that she absolutely would never break those rules. “Interesting,” Tui said, “but what about between you? Anything? What about anal sex?” Then she realised she’d gone too far. “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask that. You don’t have to answer.”

Larissa shrugged. “It’s OK. So we do bondage, a little, you know that, but only simple stuff. And no pain, ever. I’m not allowed to think about it, or ask about it, and I’d never do it to Julian. As for anal sex ... we’ve done it twice. The first time we did it, it was ... ok. Not painful, but not fun. Still, I said I’d do it anytime he wanted. But after the second time ... nah, he didn’t like how it made me feel, and he promised me we’d never talk about doing it again.” He’d asked her about it again before Marty and Tui picked them up, unsure about how she felt, worried she’d be hurting. And it was funny, because if he hadn’t been concerned, he’d really need to be concerned, but since he was concerned, he didn’t need to be. And she was hurting, only that was because of something else, which distracted him away from the subject, at least. “You?”

Tui looked at her in surprise. “Never! Never talked about it, never do it. None of those things.”

Larissa shrugged. “I wouldn’t recommend them unless you need them. And you’d know if you did.”

At this point, Marty interrupted from the front. “We’re just about at Taumaranui. Breakfast. What do you want?”

They found a little café, and bought coffee and toasted sandwiches, and got straight back on the road. Larissa pulled out her computer, and spent the next hour reading, when it wasn’t crazy windy roads, watching the scenery, and talking to Tui or singing with her.

Suddenly, a huge lake appeared off to their left. Marty pulled over into a car park on the side of the road, and they all got out and looked at Lake Taupo. A massive volcanic crater, Marty told them, one of the biggest eruptions ever during the time of mankind. The lake left behind was much bigger than any permanent lake in Australia, and Larissa could see how big it was. Awesome.

A little while later, they turned south from Turangi, and Tui said that they were at the start of The Desert Road. A desert in New Zealand? Sure was: gradually the vegetation thinned out and then it was bare and brown – too nasty in winter, Tui said. At the same time, the mountains marched over the horizon, the perfectly conical Mount Ngauruhoe and the bigger spread of Mount Ruapehu, both still active and dangerous volcanos. Marty stopped twice for them to get out and have a better look. Julian was particularly appreciative because this was scenery straight out of the Lord of the Rings movies – where the Mt Doom and Mordor parts were filmed.

Eventually, the mountains started marching over the horizon behind them, and the vegetation started reappearing, and then Marty made a brief detour to show them Tangiwai, where the last big eruption from Mt Ruapehu back in the 1950s had flooded a river, destroying a railway bridge, leading to the deaths of hundreds of passengers when a train ploughed straight into the swollen river. What a horrible way to go, Larissa thought, shuddering.

Then they were heading south again, through lush farmland and bush. Larissa had a nap and otherwise alternated reading her textbooks, and talking to Tui or the guys, who played music, games, and checked their email or whatever. They stopped for lunch at a place named Levin that they came to after a long patch of straight road – famous in New Zealand for actually being straight. They’d made good time, so they stopped and had a nice lunch at a café, and stretched their legs.

A few minutes south of Levin, Marty turned off the highway inland towards the Tarurua mountains, their destination for the afternoon. Near the foot of the mountains, Marty checked the name on a letter box beside the road and then turned into a little farm, parking out in front of a tiny little farmhouse.

They were welcomed by an old farmer and his granddaughter, who had set all this up. David, the farmer, looked to be around seventy or so, a deeply tanned wild country man. He had one of the most impressive beards Larissa had seen, and she’d seen a lot since covid started. This one truly deserved a lifetime achievement award. David was their guide, and they introduced themselves as his granddaughter told them his story – he’d once been a zookeeper down in Wellington, but that hadn’t been outdoorsy enough for him, so he’d come up here with his family to farm – growing flowers and vegetables for market. But that hadn’t been wild enough for him either, so he spent lots of time in the mountains behind the farm watching the wildlife. That’d led to a few research papers published in association with the uni that Marty and Tui had gone to, and his granddaughter had naturally gone there to do biology for her wonderful granddad and met up with Marty there. Ten years earlier, her grandma had died – cancer, quite quick – so he’d sold up the farm and moved to this tiny place, and now he hardly ever came out of the mountains; his grandchildren loved going in to camp with him out there, and that’s all he wanted in life. And when Marty had asked, there was nothing David wanted to do more than show Julian and Larissa some of the bird life in the mountains, and then they were going to camp overnight in there somewhere.

While they were doing this, they packed their backpacks that the granddaughter produced from somewhere for them, a change of clothes, a few personal things, their phones and spare batteries, and a warm top. He grimaced when Julian and Larissa didn’t have anything warm, and produced some very warm heavy woollen shirts for them to pack. Larissa packed water, but he made her put it back in the ute, to her surprise – no use wasting weight on water. Such a different attitude to Australia where you never went anywhere by foot without lots of water. Then he loaded their packs up with food and sleeping bags, though their packs were light and tiny compared to his. At least he was happy when he inspected Julian and Larissa’s boots and thick socks.

Finally, he approved of their packing, and then he got Marty to park his ute in a garage that he locked up, and the four of them said good-bye to the granddaughter, and their adventure began.

It started with the four of them sitting on an old trailer towed by a tractor. They turned out of the farm and headed toward the mountains. Nice and slow, no hurry. This had to be Larissa’s favourite form of transport yet, sitting in the breeze, resting against Julian and talking to her friends. And waving at the surprised people in the cars that waited behind them to pass. After a few minutes, they turned off the road onto a farm track that led straight into one of the many valleys that snaked into the range in front of them. Eventually, after crossing a few streams and passing through some farm gates, they came to the end of the farmland. David stopped the tractor and said, “All right, we’re on foot from now on.”

They quickly settled into a pattern, David at the front, and then the four of them, rotating around as they stopped to look at the landscape and the flora and fauna. David knew this area like the back of his hand, and he often paused to show them features of interest. When they were just walking, they all talked. They were following a barely observable track, and they occasionally had to climb up or down banks to cross streams, or pick their way through thick stands of bush, though mostly the rainforest they were in was relatively open below the canopy. Julian was particularly fascinated by this damp rainforest – so different from anything around their home.

There was no one else around, and David said that this track was his own one. Later, further into the bush, they might run into other people tramping through the national park or hunting deer, pigs and goats. They could find pigs? Yes, David said, there were some in the ranges, but usually further in than they were going. After about an hour on foot, David pointed up the hill and said it was time to turn up there, off the track, leave your packs behind, and just bring cameras. Now the going got tough, and they were all stumbling a bit. Except for David, who was leaving them all for dead.

Up the hill, they found a little valley making its way into the mountain at right angles to the valley they’d been walking up. “This is my favourite place to watch our small birds,” he told them. “The valley is pretty wet but also gets pretty good sun, so it’s very productive, and the canopy is very thick. The little birds can hide from the hawks really well, and there’s a few families that have been here for decades, since I first came in here.”

They walked carefully and quietly along the valley floor, sometimes in the little creek that ran through it, up to their knees. Gradually, they got better at spotting the birds, and picking them by their different calls. There was a profusion of different kinds of birds, and Larissa amused herself by trying to get photos of as many as she could – she wasn’t quite as fascinated as Julian and Marty, though this was certainly a very special experience.

Then David said, “OK, we’re going to lie here as still as we can for a little while.” They lay down on the damp leaf litter, and David spoke quietly to them as he identified the birds. Two of the most common types were little robins that were very similar, one with a red splash on its chest, and one that had yellow. They paired for life, David told them, and he’d given many of them names. Suddenly, after waiting maybe half an hour, he pointed to a new bird – a mix of red and yellow on its chest. “That one,” he said, “that’s a cross-breed between them. The red and yellow ones don’t like to breed with each other, but they can if they have to. That one’s parents were runts of the litter, and both couldn’t find mates, so they paired with each other. I was the first person to see it, one of my research papers.” He paused and then said in an off-hand tone of voice, “the birds are just racist,”

Then he pointed out a little grey bird. “That one, it’s rare now. It used to be really common around the whole ranges, but I hardly see it anymore, because the possums and rats can get to its nests and eat the eggs. The parks service has been working really hard to kill the pests off, but it’s a hard battle. We’re doing better in this little valley because I often trap possums here.” He pointed out a trap. “I think it’s a much bigger deal that we realise because see this tree here?” He pointed to the most common tree around them. “This one is the backbone of the forest, everything else grows on it’s frame. But look around, you won’t see many young ones, when I used to when I was young. I think it’s because the little grey robin is the only one that fertilises it. If I’m right, then in about thirty years or so this forest will start collapsing, nearly fifty years after we started killing the possums and rats, which was thirty years after they become a problem.”

Larissa had a chill down her spine. Eighty years before the ecosystem collapsed?

“Umm, is it irreversible? Are you sure?” Asked Julian, and his voice told Larissa he was as weirded out as she was by that.

David shrugged. “I think so, but it’s controversial. The uni has a research project coming to visit this year to see if they agree. And who knows how the system will adapt? It will adapt somehow but we don’t know how. Our grandchildren might not like the gift we’re leaving them. But I’ll never know, right?”

They thought about that in silence. What was there to say?

A few minutes later there was a loud flapping noise, and David pointed out an aggressive contest between two birds, threatening each other with loud calls and their wings. It didn’t last long. David pointed to the winner. “That’s a Tui. Nga Tui are big and strong, and very aggressive birds, and they really like to have their say. All Tuis are very territorial, love fighting.”

Larissa was lying next to Tui, and she turned her head to look at Tui, and then burst into loud laughter when she saw Tui’s expression given what David had just said about Tuis. A serious faux-pas given that they were bird-watching, but that was very funny. And then she wasn’t the only one laughing as the guys figured it out.

That scared the birds off, but David said it was time to go anyway. Then he admitted with a twinkle in his eye that he wasn’t quite telling the truth about the Nga Tui, and he was very happy that Larissa had picked up on it. Hah. They made their way down the valley and then carefully back down to the original track where they retrieved their packs. As they picked up their packs, ready to tramp further into the ranges, a gentle rain started. It pretty quickly picked up, into a steady downpour. “Is this rain OK?” Larissa asked David, because she hadn’t seen any weatherproof camping gear such as tents in any packs.

“Oh, sure,” David replied. “This rain will disappear pretty quick, and we’ll see the sunset yet.”

Then they walked on up the valley for an hour, in steady rain, and then up and over a saddle in the hill that left them all very warmed up. Larissa had been hoping for a good view from the saddle, but they were in foggy cloud and heavy rain, with a brisk wind blowing over the top of the hill. Almost cold enough for her to dig out that warm woollen shirt, even warmed up as she was from all the walking. At the bottom of this new valley there was a brisk river flowing, knee deep and maybe four to five meters wide. They walked across it, and stopped for a snack, and drank straight from the river: pure cold water – perfect. The rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle by this stage, and they could see the sun breaking out down the valley.

After a few minutes walking up alongside the river, David said, “OK, there’s an area up around the corner where the water slows down, and a good set of birds gather late in the afternoon. I’ve got a good bird hide looking out over the area, big enough that we can all fit in there, though it’ll be cosy. The view’s pretty good and I’ve got some of my best photos there.” Sounded great, Larissa thought, from his tone, but... “But the only way to get to it is across the flats here, and you’ll get waist deep in mud. And then we come out the same way. Are you interested?”