18/03/09

The alarm went off at 7, I was already awake anyway, but still couldn't be arsed to get up because it was freezing and had been raining on and off for the past few hours. We eventually all got up and drove over to the DOC carpark. We had a bit of a debate on what was best to take with us on the Tongariro Crossing. I ended up taking a spare pair of trousers, a pac-a-mac, sun-cream, 2 apples, 8 museli bars, a carrot, 2 sandwiches and 3 big bottles of water. We looked out the window and everyone else were dressed up in thermals, with thermal flasks for their drinks, expensice hiking boots, hats, gloves, scarves, hiking sticks and all sorts more. Helen didn't have a spare pair of trousers so tried on my cotton ones, she looked well funny, like someone from the 70's wearing their trousers right up to their nips. I eventually decided to go in shorts, 2 T shirts and a hoody.

The van showed up to pick us up and we had to sign some form to do with health and safety, as I signed it the guy looked at me funny and said 'Do you have any other footwear? You can't do it in Flip-Flops!' I said I had hiking boots in my bag. On the way to Mangatepopo the guy told us about all the different hills and mountains that had been used in Lord of the Rings, then let us know all about how he was an Orc, expecting us to all be amazed. He dropped us off and we set off on the 19.4km hike through the mountains.

Some girl looked at me really worried and said 'You're doing it in Jandals, do you know what it's like?' I said 'no, I'll be fine' but she actually looked really worried as if I was about to die or something. Other groups of people were fully kitted out with water bladders, and huge rucksacks, I have no idea what they had in their bags but in my opinion they were carrying far too much. We all had what we needed in a tiny day bag each.

After we had been walking for no more than 5 minutes the hoodies came off, shortly followed by the top T-Shirt, a little while after that we were bare-chested, the other groups still had huge jackets and fleeces on. It wasn't long before the sun cream was out as well. We arrived at the Devils Staircase and spent a good hour or two climbing the 560 metres. Eating apples while walking up mountains has to be one of the hardest things to do in the world, you get so out of breath. We finally got to the top and walked across the South Crater with Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom) on our right and then climbed to the Red Crater, another 280 metres where we stopped for lunch.

We set off again and had a great view of the Emerald Lakes and the Blue Lake in the distance because the cloud had cleared quite a lot. The area stank of rotten eggs because of all the Sulphur spewing out from the volcano and it was starting to make me feel a little bit ill. The path down to the Emerald Lakes was insane, it was nothing but shin deep gravel all the way and it was so steep I don't think any photo will do it justice. We started to decline fairly slowly, Rich and I got bored of the slow side stepping so went for the dig the heel in and lean back approach, suprisingly Coops joined in and sped up quite a bit. We got to the bottom and Rich and Coops had loads of stones in their shoes, I had Jandals on though so suffered no such problems. We looked back and Helen and Pat were still pretty much right at the top, so I ate a carrot while we were waiting for them to catch up. I've never had so many funny looks in my life.

We walked across the central crater and past the Blue Lake then the path turned in to a windy downward spiral to get to the Ketetahi Hut. Walking down hill in jandals is pretty hard, you have to lean back to stop them coming off your feet, I was starting to get a bit of a stomach ache as we neared the hut. When we did arrive we got a nice waft of long-drop public bogs, it was the most rancid thing I've smelt in a while. As we sat and ate our sandwiches I got a lecture from some girl working at the hut that looked like a classic park ranger all about how walking in flip-flops for a long time causes long term knee and hip injuries. We set off again and headed back down the mountain, as we entered the forest at the bottom I had just about had enough of the walking. We then passed some workmen that were repairing some of the steps, as Helen went passed she slipped and one of them had to grab her to stop her falling flat on her arse in the mud. The path turned really muddy from here on, probably the worst terrain for flip-flops, evey step I took flung mud all over the back of my back and legs. Each stride also caused the flip flop to get heavier and heavier and every now and then it would just stay in the mud as I stepped out of it. After what seemed like an eternity of walking and scraping mud off the bottom of my thongs we arrived back at the car park after walking 19.4km, a huge sigh of relief was heard from Helen and Coops as we got sat down on the grass.

We were dropped off back at the DOC car park and we took it in turns using the showers in the nearby campsite. As I was going to use the showers I felt something in my pocket, I picked it out, turns out they were rocks from the earlier decent towards the emarald lakes. I spent a good 5 minutes picking rocks out of my shorts then headed to the showers. s***test shower ever, it went from freezing to boiling constantly. We drove off Taupo in the evening, stopped off at a Motel so Helen and I could have a dump and then found a place to pull up and stop for the night. It was right on the waterfront of the lake and had public toilets right next to it, what a bonus. We had an early night again as we were all shattered from the walking. This time the camper was parked angling downwards towards the back so I didn't have to worry about rolling over onto Coops side of the bed for once.