Hiking along the Te Araroa Trail, hitchhiking experiences probably rank among the top few of my unforgettable memories….
Well, that’s quite a contradiction, isn’t it?
It’s not just the relief of finally being able to rest without walking (so honest, right?), but also those unexpected fleeting encounters with strangers that might spark stories, bring smiles, or create ripples for the future.
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After following New Zealand’s Te Araroa Trail to Lake Tekapo, I decided to give myself a full day off. In the midst of relentless daily hiking, this break felt all the more important.
Tekapo is close to a beautiful mountain range, including Mt. Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak. Climbing snow-capped Mt. Cook isn’t something just anyone can do, but the surrounding area has many beautiful, accessible short trails where you can even see glaciers.
Though nearby, it’s still a hundred kilometers away! How to get there? Stand by the road, stick up your thumb. Hitchhiking is a hiker’s best option.
After waiting for a while, a sedan pulled up behind us. That moment of glancing through the window and focusing—those few seconds felt incredibly complex. Who were these people? I was nervous about the conversation to come.
The front window rolled down, and two Asian girls asked us in English where we were headed. They then discussed the location with each other—clearly unfamiliar with it—and pulled out their phones to look it up.
I could tell they were confused because I heard them speaking Chinese to each other. Though their accents were slightly different.
It turned out they were girls from Tianjin and Xi’an, China, who were only in New Zealand for a week-long road trip. They were both under twenty-five, had arranged this adventure across the Southern Hemisphere on their own, and had kindly picked up a stranger along the way.
Their original destination happened to be halfway to Mt. Cook, which meant the remaining fifty kilometers would require finding another ride.
As we drove and chatted, one of the girls suddenly said, ‘Why don’t we just take you all the way to Mt. Cook? We can drive back afterward.’ I was stunned—I thought I’d misheard. It was still fifty kilometers away, and the round trip would take a significant amount of time.
Once the idea was on the table, both girls discussed it excitedly. After we shyly urged them to think it over, they came up with another idea: why not hike part of the trail themselves? And that was it—plans changed just like that!
That day, we walked together, talked, and gazed at Mt. Cook—like old friends reuniting for an outing. The trail had become just scenery; the real memory was our lovely encounter with these two girls.
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I still can’t believe these two girls would give up precious travel time on their Southern Hemisphere adventure for strangers they’d known for less than ten minutes. What kind of gracious, easygoing nature would make someone alter their entire day’s plans so freely?
Even now, I occasionally receive messages from them on WeChat: ‘When are you coming to Xi’an? I’ll take you exploring the Silk Road.’ ‘And when are you coming to Taiwan? We can go around the island together.’
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I used to think emotion came from landscapes, but what truly touches the heart comes from connection between people.
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Photo: Lake Tekapo in autumn
(Reflecting on diary entry from 2017/4/24)
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