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We arrived in Taupo last night, met up with the old crowd from our first bus and had an early night because we had to get up 5am the next day to climb a mountain/volvcano (I'm still not entirely sure!).
So 5am came and I'm as grouchy as I am at that time in the morning, luckily Charlotte's not the best morning person either so we just got on the bus and crashed out on the way there. Every so often on the way I'd wake up to the bus driver telling us about how to get up there but just couldn't keep my eyes open so we were a bit unprepared when we got there and learnt it was 6,000 ft and so high there would be snow - you can imagine my face! We were told the first part would be the hardest and was called the 'devils staircase' so off we went and came to this mass of rocks to climb - Charlotte - who's just been to S.America and completed the Inca trail flies up and I'm leaning on rocks with everyone else to catch my breath. We got over that and I thought that was the hard part over with - OH NO! That was the easy part and we were still a way off the Devils Staircase!!! The devils staircase was about an hour of climbing rock after rock but finally got to the top. We then had a couple more hours of climbing and we reached the top! Was sooooo windy and some parts you were on a steep hill so was digging in my heels as could imagine myself Mary Poppins'ing into the distance!
The way up was over but the way down was even worse - I couldn't count but 3 hours of walking down step after step after step wasn't my favourite memory....I jolted my knee, Charlotte hurt here ankle and for about the last hour we kept thinking we were at the bottom and when we clearly weren't one of us would let out the occassional 'Arrghhhhhhhh!'. We made it in 2 hours under the recommended time though which was a miracle! Wish we hadn't though as we had to sit for an hour and a half before the bus came and couldn't walk in a straight line when we stood up :(
If I ever have the idea I want to climb a mountain or anything similar, someone slap me please - never again!
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