The Cast of Characters

Here is the complete cast of characters for this tramping saga. In addition to the eleven safari participants, we had two guides. Regan was our guide for the first eight days, at which time Daniel was kind enough to take over for the last two days so Regan could attend his sister's wedding.

Regan is a skilled guide with a talent for making the experience enjoyable for everyone in the group, and clearly loves his job!


Daniel is operations manager for Hiking New Zealand on South Island, and is part owner. He is a prototypical Kiwi stud and seems to have tramping in his blood. Here he is with Dane and Claudia at the party at the end of the safari.


Our group was blessed to have two mother/daughter pairs participating, from two different countries. Astrid shared the youthful vitality of her daughter, and was the only one in the group who could do the splits!


Astrid and her daughter, Anna, are from Germany and must do a lot of hiking at home, because they were usually at the head of our pack. Actually I think Anna may have had a pet mountain goat at one time because she could practically run up the mountains.


Marja and her daughter, Vera, are from Finland. Marja loves camping out so much that she slept in a tent every night, even when we had comfy cabins to sleep in!


Vera was the youngest of the group. Here she is showing off the bottle of snow she collected at the Sealy Tarns.


Elisabeth is also from Germany, but lives in Australia most of the year now. Here she is opening her Secret Santa gift on Christmas morning.


Elissa is from England, and joined our tour directly after coming off of the Hiking New Zealand Volcanoes and Rainforests safari on North Island.


Eric is from Holland, and joined our tour after going on the West Coast Wilderness tour led by Regan. He is one of the group's two fire-starters, always on the lookout for some good wood for a campfire.


Florence had the sexiest accent on the safari. It even sounded good when she was cursing at the rainy weather. Her home is France, and ours was her third Hiking New Zealand safari on her visit to New Zealand! Florence was our other fireperson, and always had great enthusiasm for getting a fire going.


Every group has to have one and, well, let's just say that Jenny was it in our group. She is clearly completely insane. This image shows Jenny holding her Nikon D70 camera with which she took many of the images shown here, but she appears to have a greater affinity for the instrument in her right hand.


Claudia is the sexy gal from Chicago.


Dane is the weak-kneed American. Claudia and Dane are lovers, the only ones of the group so far as we know, though Elissa and Jenny did become quite close...