To Hike, or Not to Hike?

A friend invited me to join her and another girl on a backpacking trip in Kauai in April... I must say I'm very tempted.

Not that my experience in backpacking is anything to speak of, at least not without hysterical laughter. I always seem to do or wear all the wrong things when camping. In new zealand, for example, I went backpacking for the first time in my life... I had ill-fitting shoes, the wrong kind of pack, I was out of shape. I remember being on part of the Abel Tasman track (the part that hardly anyone ever does, as it turns out, because it's straight UP and you practically need a machete to hack your way through the bush), and I nearly burst into tears as I tried to put on my hiking shoes one morning, because of all the blisters i had on my feet (thanks to the fact that the shoes were too new, and too tight).

Then there was my second try on the Abel Tasman about a year later, this time on the popular coastal section. Once again I got blisters from my shoes (trail runners this time), so I wore flip-flops instead (jandals, as they are mysteriously called by kiwis). In case anyone has doubts about whether or not flip-flops are ideal for hiking while wearing a heavy pack on your back, let me assure you that they are not. Also, it rained while we were on the trail. Ask me if I had any waterproof clothes.

You can probably guess the answer.

Then of course, there was the tent that we had borrowed but hadn't tested before hitting the trail. The first night we set it up, we realized it must have been bundled away still wet about, oh, a hundred years ago. It reeked of mold, to the point where we wondered if sleeping outside would really be all that bad—even though the nights were more than a little cold.

All this to say, I am not sure if I am really cut out for backpacking on Kauai. On the other hand, I bet it would make for yet another good what-not-to-do-while-hiking story to add to my ever-growing list...