“A Mish a Day” #100 The Day the World Changed. Aotearoa/New Zealand. 23.3.2020. 2020 was going well until the 11th of January, this was when a large commercial fridge door on a cruise ship slammed into my left hip. From here the year took a turn, as I am not very good at sitting still, which is the only way to fix the damage done to my hip. The damage is to my hip flexor, and unfortunately an incredibly slow and frustrating healing process.
I love owning a home in Te Anau, as I feel there are very few places so close to the untouched natural paradise of Fiordland National Park and all its magnificent mountains. One of the only downsides to living in Te Anau is the lack of medical equipment like MRI and CT scanners, which are very important for an injury like this. Due to my injury getting worse, I decided that I needed to head up to Christchurch to get the proper scans and treatment not available in my little hometown. I traveled to Christchurch on a Sunday, and by the following Tuesday New Zealand was put into Covid-19 Lockdown and nobody was going anywhere. This not only put a stop to getting any scans and also stopped me from returning to my home in Te Anau. Since the lockdown, New Zealand’s usually booming tourism industry has suffered terribly, with its supply of costumers cut off by the closing of New Zealand’s boarder. While all of this was going on the forest, lakes and mountains of Aotearoa remained empty for five weeks (except in Kahurangi National Park…), and for people like myself the lack of wilderness really started to take its toll.
I decided at the start of the lockdown to start the “A Mish a Day” series to keep people motivated about the outdoors and show them its stunning natural beauty, and to help with ideas for when we are aloud back into the wild. So to get the ideas following I needed inspiration gained from wilderness experiences, so I managed to achieve this by camping around my parents property, as I was trapped there during lockdown. Not only has starting Nzhikes.co.nz kept me sane through reliving some of my adventures, it has also connected me with like minded outdoors people, who I hope will find some mission inspiration from reading my stories. I ‘d like to say to the people of the world who dream of a wilderness experience in New Zealand’s stunning backyard, “We, the people of this country will take care of this pristine environment until you are aloud to visit and enjoy the experience for yourselves”… Tuhinga o mua aroha nga tangata te whenua Aotearoa! Kia Kaha Aoturoa!!
