It was a peaceful Monday morning when Critic Te Arohi met up with Gus. He looked dapper as ever, with a bow tie and three-piece suit on. He was clearly prepared for an interview. Gus, AKA @thegreatjandal on Instagram, is taking on a unique and completely self-imposed challenge: to complete all ten of the Great Walks in Aotearoa New Zealand in a pair of jandals. In addition to the challenge of heel support, he is taking on individual challenges for each track. That's right, Gus, a secret Australian, is doing the most Kiwi thing possible: going into the bush equipped with little but his confidence.
It all began one wet and fateful night on the Routeburn track. “I got a little bit too drunk for my mate’s birthday and left all my shoes and stuff out in the rain overnight”, said Gus, so instead of putting on wet socks and shoes to walk out, “I just chucked on the jandals and walked down.” It originally started as a joke, with his mates saying he could do all the Great Walks in jandals. But after a quick DM to Havaianas he got his first official sponsor. “They sent me two pairs of jandals and a really nice t-shirt,” he said. The two pairs of jandals, black and red, are used as hiking jandals and sport jandals respectively. Gus is constantly chasing “the good clap” that is produced “when you’re walking fast, and you get the clap between the jandal and the heel.” Critic Te Arohi did not ask if he had experienced the bad kind.
In addition to his Havaianas sponsorship, Gus just landed a new sponsor: Pit Viper. He was “really excited” about this. His group has a few pairs of the infamous sunnies already but “the crew and I needed an upgrade,” which led to his second official sponsor. If any readers own a drink company and want to get in contact with Gus, please reach out because his next sponsorship target is someone to provide refreshments for all the long, gruelling days.
There are many benefits to having jandals: they’re cost-effective, they have an amphibious mode for river crossings, and well, you just look great. In order to prepare his feet for strenuous walks, Gus says he paints the toenails first. “Then on steep sections of the Kepler I taped my ankles, but the second day was flat, and I wanted speed so I just raw dogged it.” During the off-trail days, Gus is getting into training his feet. “On the downhill part you’re gripping the whole time, so I need to figure out some kind of contraption like a little elliptical for my toes.” Besides bulking his toes he does not really train. He reckoned that “the best thing to do is just go into it because I’ll injure myself otherwise.”
Before the Great Jandal, Gus never did that much tramping. “I really wanted to get into tramping and this challenge gave me an excuse to go out and do it and actually travel around the country as well,” he said. Unsurprisingly, though, he’s always been a jandals man. “I’ve worn them in places where I definitely regretted it afterwards but I wanted that feeling of freedom.” He does not plan on returning to regular tramping boots anytime soon.
So far Gus has completed the Kepler Track, leaving nine more to go. “Ideally I’d like to finish it on New Year’s, but definitely by the end of next summer,” he said. After the Kepler “my ankles were really swollen, and feet were sore but way better off than I expected”. Surprisingly, he didn’t even get a blister between his toes, which is incredible considering that he said he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing socks with his jandals. “Raw dog all the way,” he said, brave words for a man with nine great walks to go.
The next Great Jandal mission was the Milford Track. The trip was named, “MILF in twelve hours” because if it took longer to complete “you have to pay for three nights which we didn’t really want to do, so we decided to run it one day.” He feels so confident in his jandals that he reckons “at maximum speed I could definitely outrun an angry swan.” Unfortunately, due isolation, the “MILF in 12 hours” had to be postponed.
Gus is most looking forward to the Abel Tasman because it’s on the beach. “That’s, like, the Havaianas’ natural habitat so they’ll feel at home there,” he said, but the most challenging one will most likely be the Tongariro Northern Circuit “because it’s all rock.” Each of these walks will come with their own challenge. Gus is unsure of how he will match up, but his current plans are “one where I only eat peanut butter the whole time, one wearing a morph suit, wear dresses for another one, and on the Routeburn instead of carrying a pack I’ll drag a suitcase with me.”
Gus sees this as “my chance to put jandals on the map.” He also hopes to see climbing shoes “develop the open toe technology”. But Gus has much higher aspirations than just the sport shoe world: “I was gutted [when I learned] I can’t wear jandals to work because they’re not steel-toed, so I hope they’ll take them into the lab and develop steel-toed jandals and see those in the workplace soon as well.”
Spoken like a man who can handle the jandal.