Man or bear

When hikers part company in the wilderness, it doesn’t always end in alpine divorce, writes Danielle Murray.

- writes Danielle Murray

Oh dear.

I left him up a mountain. This mountain, on a small island in the Great Barrier Reef, was balmy and lush and exactly how I expected a tropical rainforest to be – beautiful.

But how the hot Kiwi guy could be so oblivious to danger is a mystery. So, too, is the fact that when he asked me to accompany him up to the lighthouse at the end of the day, I said yes. Because I knew about the nasty snakes and I knew that dusk is when they come out to play – or kill.

It’s just that I didn’t expect hot Kiwi guy to want to carry on. I mean, we climbed the tower, the view was great, did we really need to go to the summit and watch the sun go down too? Apparently yes. And he was so polite in the asking, such a nice young man, he was. So I joined him. Until suddenly it was dark, the path was gone and we were surrounded by bush.

“You go,” I said, “I’ll wait.”