Lucky Uruguayan tourist Patricia Flores says she will tell her parents about her three-hour ordeal of hanging on to a tree and screaming to be rescued - but only when she is safely at home this week.
"I will tell them when I arrive, because I don't want to worry them," Miss Flores, of Montevideo, told the Queenstown Times on Friday night.
The 29-year-old woman narrowly escaped serious injury by instinctively grabbing a tree when she slipped on rocks while lost high off the Ben Lomond track at twilight on Thursday.
Miss Flores, based in Auckland, has been working mostly as a waitress on a working holiday visa.
She was visiting friends of friends in Queenstown from last Wednesday until Saturday.
On Thursday, about 3.30pm, she set off up the 1748m peak.
She was wearing a sweater, jacket, jeans, gloves and carrying a bag, but had no food or water and she had lost her mobile phone three weeks earlier.
"I tried to get to the top.
I lost the track maybe 30 minutes after I started walking but I decided to keep going," she said.
"There is so many trees that I didn't see marks on the trees anywhere.
"I knew I was off the track. The way up was really difficult but I decided to keep going because I could see I was near the top.
"In some places I could see the gondola.
"There was a lot of broken trees and rocks and when I realised I couldn't go up, I tried to go down."
Miss Flores followed the lights and made it past the Skyline Gondola on her way back to town but ran into trouble on the side of a bluff above a drop of more than 10m.
"I slipped on rocks and fell.
I just tried to grab anything, and I grabbed a tree that was hanging over the rock.
I could put both my feet on a rock below but it was slippery.
"That position was very difficult and I was feeling very tired.
I was by myself and when I realised I couldn't get out, I felt very scared about what was happening."
Miss Flores said it was dark, cold and raining.
She called for help for what seemed like hours, she said.
"I was shouting `Help', `Please, somebody hear me'."
A Brazilian man and woman heard her screams from the ground below.
Another bystander called the police while the woman called back to Miss Flores to reassure her help was on its way.
A Queenstown police officer and the Brazilian man walked up the track in an attempt to find her in the dark.
"They found me and asked if I was OK and kept telling me the rescue team was coming," Miss Flores said.
"They couldn't reach me where I was and I was very nervous.
"More rescue people came down and they secured me with ropes and we both went down where other people, a paramedic, were waiting for me.
"But I couldn't move my leg so they took turns to carry me then they put me in a stretcher to a police car that took me to the ambulance."
Miss Flores said she was treated for the cramp in her left leg and she was sore, but otherwise in good health.
The St John ambulance transported her to Lakes District Hospital, where she was assessed for hypothermia and discharged later that night.
Police gave Miss Flores a lift and she returned to where she had been staying about midnight.
She said her housemates had not been alarmed by her absence because they thought she had met a friend.
She was thankful to the people who helped her.
"I really would like to come back to New Zealand but I would be more careful."
