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Sunday 3rd April
This morning was the earliest start yet. We decided to do the Tongariro Crossing in Taupo which required us to get on a bus at 5.40am! Luckily new zealand had theirr daylight savings that night so we gained an extra hour in bed so it felt like 6.40am - still early for me though! The Tongariro Crossing is a 19km hoke across their national park which has three mounntains you can climb as a tangent to the main route - on of them being mount doom which is in Lord of the Rings (apparently!) We got to the start of the walk with our driver unsure as to how the weather would be further into the walk. We decided tto go ahead with the walk as it had taken an hour and a half to get there. Jack and I were walking with a dutch girl from our bus called Suzan who we already knew quite well beforwe the walk and was really lovely. The first hour of walking was pretty straight forward as it was along mainly flat ground and we managed to do 4km of the walk. The next part was called 'Devil's Staircase' which as the name suggests involved us climbing up constant set of stairs carved out in the mountain side for 45 mintues which was seriously tiring! The next bit saw us climbing up 'Red Crater Ridge' which was described in the guide as 'not too difficult', however because we were basically walking in the clouds th winds were (we found out the next day) between 50km and 80km strong and we were fairrly exposed walking up the ridge as there weren't too many big rocks to get shelter from as the wind was blowing from the left to our right. Once we clambered our way to the top, we were even more exposed to the wind with a 4/5 metre width pathway and sheer drops either side. Standing upright made it easier for the wind to push us towards the right side of the path so we had to keep low and at certain point sat down on the ground and waited for a breif drop in the wind before moving again! Coming down the other side of the ridge eas also quite interesting as it was all downhill but the pathway was all rubble so we were basically slidding down the pathway for about 15/20 mintues! Once passed this bit we were definitely over the worse and managed to do the rest of the walk without any trouble from the wind, we gained a guy called Yann half way through the walk andd it even brightened up for the last few hours of the trek which gave us a chance to get some blue skyed photos! We started the walk at 1100m, our highest point was 1900m and the finishing point was 750m so we did a fairr bit of uphill and downhill walking. They suggest the walk will take between 7 and 8 hours but we managed to do it in 6 hours with half an hour stop for lunch on the way! We found out the next day that the weather was borderline to them closing it and quite a few people have actually died on the walk when the weather has been extreme and they have been ill-prepared!
When we got back to the hosteel we decided to go out for a well deserved meal at a place called 'Waterside Restaurant' just around the corner from the hostel and it was incredible, the food was absolutely amazing. After that the group we've been hanging around with suggested going to these hot springs which are open 24/7 and are free for the public to go in, so we walked (again) for about 30 minutes to the hot springs which were absolutely boiling and really nice. After about an hour we decided to call it a night as it had been a long and tiring day for us!
Monday 4th April
Today has been a fairly easy day as we are heading from Taupo to River Valley where we stay in the middle of nowhere with the chance to do grade 5 white water rafting tomorrow. We stocked up on food, went for a quick 30 minute walk around a particular part of the national park we were at yesterday but unfortunately the waterfall wasn't very pretty today as there had been a huge downpour last night which made all the water a gross brown colour! We then went to the information centre about the national park where the woman was surprised to hear that we had managed to do the whole crossing yesterday and didnt have to turn back! We arrived at River Valley Lodge about 5pm, with a bbq dinner available at half 6 and happy hour planned for half 7 to half 8. Since we had a bit of time to kill we played a game if volleyball which eas really good fun and some people had a quick dip in the river (i didn't it was freezing!) before dinner was ready. That night we were staying in a dorm called the 'orgy dorm' this was because there were 32 beds in the dorm, 16 each side of a wooden seperator that you could see over and 8 beds on the bottom platform and 8 beds on the top (pictures will make it a bit clearer!) so we were all really excited to be in a massive room together. Dinner was pretty yummy and then a game of Ring of Fire started which did end up getting unexpectedly messy but over all the night was really funny and we had our first bus hook up!!
Tuesday 5th April
Today we hauled ourselves out of bed after not getting a great deal of sleep to go white water rafting!! After kitting us out with all our wetsuit stuff we headed for a 30 minute drive up from the lodge to the start of the white water rafting track. I was in a boat with Jack, Aaron and Maisie (the other couple on our bus) and Ben and Guy (the two surrey boys) and our instructor was called Antz who was a lot of fun!! The rafting trip was amazinggggg with sections of grade 3 and 4 (which were similar to the ones i'd done before in turkey) and most importantly grade 5 sections of the track which were awesome! The photos on facebook pretty much catch all of the rapids we went down and how stong the waters were. We all absolutely loved it and like everything having a really good guide just made it even better. Before the last rapid Antz told us he was going to over turn the boat so we could do the last small rapid lying on ourr backs! That bit was quite mental as you suddenly felt properly how cold the water was but it was good fun. Finally we got to jump off a 4/5 metre high rock into the water which i actually got a bit scared about which makes me a bit worried for the bunjee jump but ah well! Once we showered and paid for our stay at the lodge we had to say goodbye to Antz and head off on the bus to Wellington. We slept a lot on the trip down as we were generally pretty shattered. Stopped off in a place called 'Bull' where we sat in McDonalds chilling out and discovered that a soft scoop ice cream was 30p so after a hot chocolate (which had marshmellows in it!) i also endulged in an ice cream! About 6pm we got into Wellington where we are staying at Base again. It was quite a sad night for us as for the first time we had a split in our bus, we decided to stay on for 3 nights instead of one night in wellington as a lot of the friends we made were staying for an extra few days and we had a few days to play with as well. But some of the other girls on the bus that were really good fun were sticking to the one night stop over so we all went to the bar below the hostel that evening for a few drinks. We wanted to go onto a bar called 'Alice' that we heard was really good as it was themed like Alice in Wonderland but it was closed, so the group started heading to different bars and as we had a few nights here we decided to save ourselves for a big night out the next day instead. We got to say our goodbyes to everyone who were getting on the ferry early the next day and called it a night. We were staying in a 6 bed dorm with Aaron and Masie and another couple that had already been in the hostel a few nights who were really nice and chatty (she was actually from Maldon!!) so we were chatting to them quite a bit for as well.
Wednesday 6th April
Today we got woken up by Ben and Guy knocking at our door at 10am as they were moving into our room for the next two nights since the couple we met had left to get the ferry that morning. After a lazy start to the morning and a catch up of the gossip from the night before, we headed to the main museum in Wellington Te Papa which was free to get in and had 4 floors of stuff to investigate. Turned out the museum was actually amazing, it was so modern and interactive that we managed to spend 4 hours there without getting bored! The first floor was the best with information and viedos about their earthquakes (which obviously seems quite current at the moment) and an interactive wall where you could take photos of yourself and then put it up on a big wall which was pretty good fun! We then went to the supermarket to stock up on food and alcohol for the next few days, chilled out in the room for a bit and then the six of us went on a hunt for some cheap dinner. We ended up finding an indian which you could get any curry of your choice, plain naan bread and plain rice for like six pounds which we thought was pretty amazing so we took it back to the hostel room and ate it in there. With a quick change we were ready to start drinking so we did pre drinks in our room which the other two girls Lola and Georgia joined in on. We played Ring of Fire again with some slightly different rules and then headed downstairs to the basement bar again as they had 2 pound drinks all night which felt like being back as a student with decent priced drinks! lol. We also met up with Rachel and Anna from our bus who are staying with a friend while in Wellington who was also out. The bar was really good fun with the drinks fully flowing, however a few of us really wanted to check out this Alice Bar. So we attempted to go in it again and we were happy to see it was open. HOWEVER it turned out to be a huge disappointment, it's attempt at being Alice themed was pretty poor and the 'teapot' alcoholic drinks were $20 each (that's like 10 pounds) so we decided to turn back round to Base and tell the others not to go. When we got there, we had lost the four girls and Guy so we also kinda lost the momentum for a big night and at about 12/1 we called it a night again!
Thursday 7th April
It's currently about 3pm here now and i'm not gonna lie, today hasnt been very exciting!! I'm having a bit of a catch up day with the blog and with washing etc. It's been nice having these few days to chill, catch up and have a bit of a lay in actually and i'm literally about to have a bit of lunch, put my washing away and maybe have a bit of a walk around this afternoon but that's about it! This evening we might go to the cinema to watch Limitless as everyone is up for a bit of a chill session since tomorrow we have to leave on the coach at 7.15am exactly to catch the Ferry to the South Island at half 8. We also get a new driver tomorrow so hopefully he'll be as good as Flea if not better! Maisie and I were nice and cooked the boys Spaghetti bolognese and then we went to watch Limitless at the cinema!
Lots of Love
Kat
xxxx
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