That’s not the right way to go, possums

Four teenage German tourists had to spend a cold night huddled together in the dense Coromandel bush after they accidentally followed a possum track while on a day walk and got lost.

Malte Breucker, 18, and 19- yearolds Jon Lindau, Katharina Ulrich and Rica Stegmayer were found safe and well by search and rescue teams in a rugged area near a river about 1pm on Thursday, almost exactly 24 hours after they left Waiomu — wearing T- shirts, jeans and raincoats — for Te Puru.

The group had only been in New Zealand for about a month, Breucker said, and although they’d done some walks up north, before Wednesday it was their first time in the bush.

They had wanted to walk the Pinnacles but the track was closed.

Breucker said a Department of Conservation staff member at the information centre at the bottom of the Kauaeranga Valley had recommended the Waiomu- Te Puru track.

The tourists believed the situation

We followed the pink triangles and we had no clue where we were going. Malte Breucker

would have been more dire if they hadn’t had their cellphones with them because no one would’ve known where they were.

They got lost after becoming confused by the pink triangular signs used to mark possum trails — mistaking them for markers on a walking track.

“We were looking for a sign for Te Puru and found pink triangles and thought this would be the way to Te Puru. We followed the pink triangles and we had no clue where we were going,” Breucker told the Weekend Herald.

They’d expected the walk to take a maximum of four hours and so about 5pm after zig- zagging through steep terrain littered with roots and downed trees they realised they were lost.

“Our hope to reach Te Puru was shrinking,” Breucker said.

They could hear a river and decided to walk towards it to re- orient themselves because they knew it would lead to the coast.

But as it got darker, panic started to set in.

About 7.30pm the teenagers found a partial clearing near a waterfall and stopped to rest there.

There was cellphone coverage there and they called police to tell them they were lost and their approximate location.

The police sent out a search party but couldn’t find them, he said.

“We had luck with the weather. It was sunny in the day and it was dry through the night so that was good.”

In the morning the police contacted them to say they had sent searchers and told the tourists to stay put. Then it started raining heavily.

After about four hours of waiting they heard voices and whistles on the other side of the river and knew they’d been found and felt “pure relief ”.

Breucker said next time the tourists would make sure they were better prepared and go over their planned route with a local tramper.