Day 22- Wellington to Taupo- We got on the bus at 7.40am to a new bus driver who was still learning the rops. He forgot the name of places (they normally give us a running commentary on what we're passing etc), he was still reading off his notes and quite often he told us about things which wern't where he said they were or we'd already passed! And during talking he constantly sidetracked so he'd be mid convo talking about stockcars and then started watching 2 bulls going past in a trailor! Still on this bus wee got 20minutes free wifi and we met up with Sophie and Chris again who wass skipping Taupo so couldn't force me to do a skydive that she said she would be doing! After the driver had to use a map to find our accomodation in Taupo, we then found out he hadn't actually booked us in- twice now thats happened! Ggrrr! We offloaded our stuff, and oh yeh we dived out a plane and into the sky and prayed our parachute would open...so when we got to the hostel, as it was meant to be the last nice day for a while we told them to book us in...and we'd worry about it...once she said we would be picked up in 5minutes-aaahhhh! I was well and truly bricking it! The tables turned though when we went up in the plane after signing our lives away. I was cool calm and collected-yes you heard that rigt-and I wasn't even on my plane drugs! (probably a good thing to not fall asleep on my way down) Scotts face though as he was about to dive out of our pink plane was a picture of pure brickyness! Once we had smiled at the camera, our heads were placed back on the instructors shoulder (I later found out this happens so we don't knock them out when we fall out the plane!) and we fell out the plane and had to get in a banana shape for our freefall! The freefall wasn't like the feeling of losing your stomach on a rollercoaster like I was expecting rather an unreal feeling of flying that apparently lasted 45seconds. In that time we fell 8,000 feet-thats scary when you think about it. Then we went flying backwards through the sky when our parachute opened and we sailed down taking in the view. Think we got longer than previous people as we were the last ones of the day to skydive- so got to make the most of the stunning view hey! Once our feet were firmly back on the floor, we jumped for joy that we'd survived this ordeal, and we did a celebration scene for for the film of our skydive! With the sun fast going down we jumped back on the bus to our accomodation, ran and grabbed our cameras and broke into a jog to get to the lake before the sun had completely set! I know we have 3 more nights in Taupo but the weather is due to get bad, and you can't have rubbish rainy photos in a place so beautiful now can you! Sunset avec cloud and rain just wouldn't look tooo good now! We had dinner- a Laura special- tuna mayonaise, red onion and sweetcorn jacket potato with cheese! Have I mentioned how Scott keeps coming out with "cheese gromit" randomly 3-4times a day with a face looking like wallace- not quite sure why...must be something in the NZ water or his craving for cheese....gromit! Evening entertainment consisted of a smithy equivalent calling out bingo numbers for those who wanted to win a free shot! Me and Scott seemed to be the only ones who found him funny! Examples of his callouts included: "Nelson Mandella playing hockey number 6", "A German man driving a polo, 17", "a giraffe learning spanish, 47". And on that note it was time for bed as we had a 5am start for our Tongariro crossing the next day- a 19.4km hike around volcanos.
Day 23- Tongariro Alpine Crossing- The morning started with me f'ing and blinding when I came back from my nightly toilet break to find that it was in fact time to get up at the grand time of 4.45am! I felt like I was yet to go to sleep dammit! Bus came at 5.40am, there was meant to be 14 on the bus but only 7 arrived, and even after I ran in and told people still making breakfast the bus was here, no one moved so we left without them! Hahaha! That will teach them! We arrived at 7.30am and left there to fend for ourselves on this 19.4km walk with just poles to guide us- and we're not talking about eastern europeans here! It was an hours stroll up tot he base of Mt Doom with several photograpic stops-and a toilet stop in a loo with no flush but just a big hole in the ground-the smell was glorious! I nearly collapsed from the stench-it was truly awful! We then started ascending up what they called the devils staircase which we thought was the climb up to Mt Doom until a bit further on when we saw the actual climb up to it. The devils staircase alone was a right killer-steep hills, moving rocks, gale force winds, and your there trying to make it to the top without getting blown off the side or falling over-and to make life more fun, Scott thought it would be entertaining to stick the camera in my face and photograph me-thanks! He did carry my rucksack up the hill for me so I guess I had to humour him! He enticed me to the top of the hill with Nice biscuits though so it kept me going! The visibility on top was as good as a chocolate teapot...on our climb to the top, all views had gone and were instead replaced with clouds, even more wind, with boded well for photos dammit! With the sudden change in weather, it made the climb to Mt Doom impossible especially as you wouldn't see anything at the top, so we skipped it int he hope we would be able to see some volcanos, craters, and hot pools! As we approached the hot pools, there was a strong smell of egg. We wern't sure whether it was the hard boiled eggs in Scott's bag or the hot pools themselves. It was just like the scene from Shrek "Shrek is that you....if it was me donkey you'd be dead" hahahahaha! Anyway, we later found the smell to be from the pools and not Scott's bag-thank goodness-I've got to eat that egg! The view we got of the pools and craters were good...inbetween the long spells of cloud-you couldn't see the full view dammit...but at least we saw something! Had to be worth it after nearly getting blown away! Oh and nearly sliding down the mountain- the gravel sure does make life hard work! Walking down the steps the other side of one of the volcanos and I heard Scott stumble ehind me nearly falling arse over tit. Turns out the boy cannot multi task with eating and walking as he didn't see the steps and instead went flying down the hill somehow managing to stay upright! Plonker! He then found a spare pair of socks in his bag, put them on as gloves and did a puppet show here and there all the way down. How he didn't fall down headfirst I will never know! Don't fear though we did our walk with two canadians who are doctors so at least we were in safe hands! If anyone ever needs a canadian doctor let us know! We stopped for lunch finally at the grand time of 11.30am-we were starving! We took our boots off and sat in a small hut and ate sandwiches and our not so smelly egg! We then went into some even more hurrendous smelling loos and carried on walking to the bottom. Coming down, the scenery was so different to the baron landscape of the volcanos, rather a green forest with waterfalls and thicker air to breathe- always good! We arrived down at 1pm and had until 3.30pm for the bus to come- had there been more to see and better weather conditions we could have had more stops (for refreshments too!) and to see the landscape. I had a sore sore bum and was a little on the tired side but we finished one of the first-wahoo! Once back in Taupo, we did laundry as our black trousers and fleece had turned white from the volcano atmosphere! We then de-smelled and cooked our pasta and veg dinner followed by listening to smithy sing -he was quite good! We really thought he was going to be crap!
Day 24-Taupo- We woke up and as promised, the weather was utterly awful-no signs that is was going to stop raining! The day was spent going to a cafe-getting a cream tea and using their free internet and basically doing nothing! Evening was a little more exciting-Smithy was singing again-basically a repeat of the night before, so you could almost guess what he was going to sing next! Only problem was the night started with around only 10 people watching- so when I wanted to get up to go to the loo, I got quizzed-where you going, you sure youor going there, when you coming back etc-made you have to plan your exit well-when he wasn't looking or going go if necessary. Thankfully after an hour it got busier and livened up! Woo!
Day 25- Taupo- We woke up to see blue sky- wahoo! Even after a day of not being able to go outside that was enough-another day and I would go mad and probably send Scott mad with me! That wasn't needed though. Breakfast and internet time done and it was 10.30am. Time to do something with our day-so me, Scott and a new guy we'd met last night all went on a wee walk to go see a waterfall and famous moon craters. It twas a nice walk along the riverbank which soon became tedius. I was still a little sore from the crossing so everything was an effort. First stop down the river was to watch the bungy jump and the swing which they seem to have everywhere! Awesome setting though and you could tell Scott was tempted by it-after encouragement , peer pressure, Laura pressure...he still decided against it so we just stood and watched people getting their head dunked under water-good entertainment. We just hoped there wasn't a crocodile in the water ready to bite their heads off like on one of the beer adverts from a while ago. We soon moved on and wlaked in the direction of the waterfall-we kept seeing signs but no waterfalls-I began to think they had moved the dam thing! Seeing more people assured us we were close. Our first stop on the way was some hot pools down the river- so we dipped our feet in, lordy me it gave me a shock-hotter than a hot bath- it then became a challenge of putting your feet in slowly one at a time and being able to keep them in. After the grand total of 3minutes the feet were rather red so it was time to move on. Walking to the grass from the gravel made us realise that we had lost our bogan-ness as stones were now a problem for the poor feet! Shoes back on and 45minutes on we came to the waterfall- it was a smaller waterfall and really just a powerfall river-cool to look at...for a second! All that walk though just for that! Lets hope the craters were worth it. For those of you wondering why there were moon craters in a small town called Taupo, I can't give you the detailed explanation because I gave up reading the long information sign-but because Taupo like most of New Zealand is set right over two overlapping plates. This means the grounds and craters are bubbling hot, and steam comes out of them and bubbles the mud and water in places which all smells distinctly of egg! We arrived panting at 2pm after refreshments in a cafe down the road, and were annoyed to see we had to pay to get in the place all because of security measures incae your car got broken into...well we don't have a car dammit! Don't take our money...we soon found out we had no option but to pay (to protect everones dam valuables) but we found it to be well worth it. Was weird to see the ground bubbling hot, steaming, and smelling of egg, all because of tectonic plates! Once out and smelling beautifully eggy we called a shuttle bus as the thought of a 3 hour walk home was just too much! Once back we went to pack and save to buy some bits and back to the hostel for dinner and showers in preparation for a quiz! Yes a quiz...things like this excite us as a change from the normal being a bum so it was all good! We found some randoms to join Scott me and Dan in our team including a Danish (not pastry) and another European girl...we soon wondered how much help they would be when the majority of the questions were based on England! But never mind-its the taking part that counts right...NOT! Out of the 12 teams we came 4th wahoo! Which meant we got a free small jug of beer to share between 6 of us! Not so wahoo, and beer is manky! We later found out that they had added up the scores wrong and we in fact came.....5th....and shouldn't have got a prize....but we had already consumed our free drink so they couldn't do anything about it! At 10.30pm we then went to McDonalds and bought a super chocolate sundae as a nightcap before bedtime!