Rotorua, Mt Tongariro, East Coast

18th February 2008
Two weeks of holiday ahead and we pack up again and drive straight down State Highway 1 to Rotorua. It's a thermal area in the middle of the north island and reeks of sulphur. Pete's funniest joke while we were there was 'did you just fart?!!', wonders never cease eh? We decided to camp out for a couple of nights as there's loads of adventure stuff to do in the roo.

our campsite, lots of pukekos (Blue birds with red bills shaped like dinosaurs) There's thermal bubbling mud behind pete's back in the darkness and the earth was warm like a beach that's had the sun on it all day. I barely used my sleeping bag except as a security foil incase someone tried to break into our tent. They didn't.

Behind me is mums most awesome tent that is shaped like a sultans tent and you can stand up in it. It's old school, still made of canvas. We broke it.
So after our first nights sleep took the gondola ride up Mt Ngongotaha.
Then from the gondola we walked the rest of the way to the top. That's me, at the top. I'm already brown. We get much browner. What we don't have any pics of is there's a luge (little engineless gokarts) that you can zoom down a concrete track on the mountain. We had a couple of goes which was pretty awesome and then headed over to AGROADVENTURES! That's right the adventure part of the title is all about the zorbing and swooping we did there, but alas no photos. With our zorb, swoop ticket we got a free pass to go see the sheep show at the Agrodome. It was the best sheep show I ever saw. Below is a man sheering a real sheep. She had a name but I forget. Pete was impressed, I tried to make him go up on stage when they asked for novice cow milkers but he said he'd done it before and that would make him a sham. I wonder has he Steve, has he really milked a cow before?
I mean, look at this show! Dogs on sheep. awesome. You might think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not. I really enjoyed the show.

Then I got my photo taken with a sheep. She had a manky head but I couldn't get to the nicer sheep cause there was so many damn australians and koreans about.
Pete managed to sit next to a slightly nicer one, or so we thought, but what's up with it's nose?
Then i saw they had lambs. I just about shat myself with joy. Pete thinks I look insane, I said that's just what I look like when I'm insanely happy. lambs, gotta love lambs.

Not far from camp there was a thermal park with bubbling mud, it's just everywhere, it's too hot to touch which is a shame cause it has amazing skin nourishing minerals.

At night we went to the Polynesian Spa where they take the mineral rich geothermal lake water and cool it with a bit of normal water so you can swim in it. It stinks but your skin just shines afterwards. We had a private pool with this amazing view.
on the third day we went to Paradise Valley Springs. It's a wildlife park with it's main attraction being lion cubs that you can hold and some of the biggest trout ever. When we got round to the lion cubs they were so big you would've just thought they were regular lions except the male had a mohican rather than a full mane and looked more like a hyena. We patted them through the cage but their fur was so rough, like a cat with dried glue stuck in it's fur. Then we went and saw the big cats who were all fast asleep.
Further down the line were the wallabies, by far my favourite, the cutest things you ever saw. Their mouths against my hand were as soft as feathers.

On our way out of Rotorua we stopped at Wai-O-tapu thermal village. There were a few in Rotorua but this was the cheapest one. It was pretty good but we missed the geyser.
Champagne pool

champagne pool again, amazing colour

This was called the devils pool. It was as lime green as it looks in the pic. Something to do with all the different acids mixing and reacting.

Then it was off to the Tongariro National Park to walk the Tongariro Crossing. It's famed as the NZ's number one walk and is marked on the map as 'challenging'. The park is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I couldn't stop taking pics out the window as we drove towards the mountains....see

So this is us, we've just set off on the walk, we're told to allow 7-8 hours to complete the trek, we reckon we can make better time than that but head off at 7am, just to be sure. We look excited and naive, it doesn't even phase us that the first part of the climb is called 'the devils staircase', devil smevil. pah!

Unfortunately we didn't get any pics of the devils staircase, it was too exhausting to pull out the camera. It's basically a climb hand over fist of rocky out crops an hour and a half up the mountain side to the first plato. About half way up we passed a couple about our age that were really struggling. The girl was very thin and petite, I laughed with great mirth after we were out of earshot and said to pete (with infinite wisdom) that it's all very well being thin, but it's no good if you've not built muscle into your phsique! as I have, of course, it's all muscle, even my butt.

So we came up the staircase and walked straight into the rising sun, it was pretty amazing to say the least.
this is looking back onto Mt Ngarahoe. Nga is pronounced 'nar' and you accentuate the e, like eeeeee.
Pete's actually covered in sweat here, the photo doesn't do it justice but he's soaked. We're in the first crater after the devils staircase and making our way to the red crater.



Red crater, it looks like many things doesn't it.

decending a bit after red crater. this was super scary. for me anyway. the rocky ashey gravel underfoot just slips and rolls with every step and this mountain side is steep, you had to walk sideways and skid into it with every step until your foot was buried in a little pile of rubble for support.
but it brought us to these, the Emerald Lakes. They're Maori Tapu Waters which means 'sacred'. You're asked not to eat around them or swim in them.

'

The weather went from hot to cold in an instant, windy to calm, misty to clear. You're told to pack for every weather condition and take plenty of food and water and we're pleased we did. Once up the devils staircase we were above cloud level and on our much gentler descent down to Ketetahi Hut we walked through cloud for 2 hours.

We're still descending here through native bush now, the forest is quite dark (not just my bad photography) the canopy is dense like a hedge. We had dew collecting on our eyelashes and eyebrows, whenever you blinked it was like you'd been crying cool tears.

Pete refuelling, we were actually only 15 minutes from the end here but had no idea as the bush we'd been tramping through seemed to go on forever and we'd only set off 5 and a bit hours ago. We actually finished the Crossing in 5.5 hours, not bad for a couple of londoners eh? We were bloody shattered. In fact when we finally popped out of the bush we lay down on a wooden plinth to wait for the bus and passed out cold for nearly an hour.

When we got back to camp (wanaka) We decided we couldn't face another cold night at the base of the mountain and at 4pm we hauled up our tent and luggage in a record breaking 30minutes and bombed across to Napier on the east coast. Wine country.

We stayed in an art deco hotel called the Marconis and had fresh fish for dinner. Next day we found a campsite and chilled out, did washing, read magazines, drank beer. A good recoup for our wine tour the next day. We hired a tandem bike and took off early out to the vineyards in the surrounding countryside. .......To Be continued

ok so tried to continue this once before and the whole thing got lost and I don't have the energy to complete it really but here's the explanations in brief. ....

We went on a self guided wine tour in Napier, hired a couple of bikes and rode 46 km, yep, 46km to Sileni Vineyard. We could have ridden 2 km to the closest vineyard, but I wanted to get to Sileni, stupid girl. We hit another 4 vineyards on the way back and basically got a bit trashed and possibly slightly sun stroked, heh.

I'm drunk, therefore everything is funny...like the camera

The beginning of the longggggg trek back to camp

Pete took this driving round the east cape, thought it was funny. Locals didn't think it was funny, just pete.

Dinner in Ohope on the harbour edge, sun setting, could life be any better?
drunk lean.
pete looking out for bats, or just big moths as fellow kiwi's are aware.
k, so this was real funny, real funny and much funniness is going to be lost in translation but pete got stuck in the Honda. I'm not all that surprised, he does this, gets stuck in things, but this time I managed to get a few pics of the moment. He said he was trying to look up under the dash to fix the radio when the weight of his upturned lower body sank into his shoulders and pushed him into the bonnet.

after a couple of minutes laughing, I kindly opened the side door for leverage....
ace manovering....
free! but with all his 30 gallons of blood now residing in his head.