Kepler Track

camping club which was my introduction to this wild rugged uh terrain of of new zealand and um and i think Besides getting to know about the region, I guess it's also about the people that I was meeting through this tramping club, students from different parts of New Zealand, but also from different parts of the world.

um that really gave me this good i guess a strong foundation to tackling different sort of difficult terrains i mean you go to a national park like a proper two days hike it's in you know you're bound to do things like river crossing and and those uh experiences really give me a proper foundation uh in terms of navigating those challenges and so i i yeah i mean again like my focus was not to do a lot of camping i obviously was there to do my studies so i kind of like to took those two um sides of my interests uh separately uh i think i was obviously was focused more on like my finishing my studies because that's that's the number one priority but i also did a lot of like tramping here and there even though that wasn't like the big priority but i remember I went down the Kepler track and did this three days hike and I met this Belgian guy who had just finished the Te Araroa and then we spent...

I did the Kepler track in winter in about June, the middle of June, which was very quiet and didn't really have a lot of...

The track was again full of snow.

It's important that you obviously do a bit of research hiking in Fiordland in the wintertime, but I obviously, having gained a little bit of experience and with the right gear, I did the Kepler track and the first hot Luxmar, which is, again, massive, but it was just me and the Belgian guy that stayed overnight.

And I guess that was sort of my first introduction to teatro because he obviously, because it was just two of us, he ended up sharing a lot more about his journey to me.

And I obviously being this very curious and inquisitive guy, I just... started asking him so many questions and he was very kind and just very happy to share as well because that was such a big part of his life and a big achievement in his own way that he had such a strong sense of feeling of having accomplished something.