Hey guys, at the moment were quite busy with things over here so we have made an effort to put blogs on as we do things, that way its fresh in our minds and keeps Les happy!

Huka FallsAs punishment for all the hot weather and not working we decided to do a couple of walks, we started with Huka Falls which is a fairly easy walk along Waikato River after 1 and a half hours you reach the falls. The power of the fall is amazing and described as NZ's answer to Niagra (that's Niagra Les not Viagra!) its so fast and furious and all of this water squeezing its self through a 15metre gap down a 10 meter fall. After the walk back we decided to take a dip in the River, its geo-thermal (heated from the earth's core) so you have the cold of the lake then the heat of the little waterfall, there's a picture of me and Aaron in the natural spa and you can see the waterfall in the background, this water were sitting in is like a very hot bath around 40 degrees. Hoping this walk loosened us up for the next one.

Tangiriro CrossingThe crossing can be done from 1 day to 3 days, its 18.5km long with steep inclines and what feels like steeper declines and you can choose a couple of summits to do as extra. We decided to climb Mt Doom which was used in the Lord of The Rings and its real name is Mt Ngauruhoe, bearing in mind that by detour we're talking 3 hours and adds 3km onto the walk.There's a rule that you have to be at the base of Mt Doom at 9.15am at the latest to be able to climb it and be back at the car park for 4pm. The first incline we met was called 'devils staircase' which is about 1-1 and a half hours of about 45degree incline of rocks and no hand rail! It was hard and to make matters worse the base of Mt Doom was right at the top so no time to gather ourselves. We got to the base at 9.30am and after much discussion we decided to go for it, there was 4 of us, Woshil, Tom, and us two, they were from our room at the hostel. So we finally set up the Mountain at 9.45am, and had the task of basically rock climbing up, it was so rough, it went from rubble to rocks and was changing all the way up so we had to keep weaving around trying to find a good route. It got a little hairy when the clouds moved in and the wind picked up making it hard to see much in front of yourself, had to keep talking and shouting to each other so as not to loose anyone, when you couldn't see the floor was quite scary!It was such a backbreaking climb, 2 hours later we reached the top, the snow capped top! It was beautiful up there, the crater was massive and the view was brilliant until the clouds moved in and you couldn't see anything anymore!Time was really tight so we had to find the easiest and quickest way down, this took about 40 minutes and was nearly as hard as it was going up, a few points were we were just slipping and grabbing at rocks to stop the fall! All this remember with 6 liters of water on our back and food for the day!

Devils Staircase and Mt Doom are talked about as being the hardest parts of the crossing, we beg to differ because after the mountain we had a climb up to the Red Crater which again was a steep incline, but like a sandy rubble so really hard to climb, at about halfway up this incline all four of us were on the brink of tears! We still had so much to do and so many km's to walk, all we all wanted to do was wash and have some lunch but there was no time, when we found the last hut where you can stay overnight we had an estimated 2 hours to walk to the car park, we left here at 4pm so we had to jog most of the way, we finally got there at 4.50pm.The driver was not a happy bunny and went about making us feel guilty all the way back, but we didn't care we were just happy to be sitting down.

In total we walked 21.5km in 9 hours, drank 6 liters of water (between two) and walked away with sore feet, achy muscles, sunburn and cuts and grazes, and I bet your just tired even thinking about it!