Just call us Hobbits!

We made it safe and sound to the start of the Tongariro Crossing at 7:20am and started our long but amazing day. The hike started off pretty easy - what a trick! After a half hour or so of boardwalk you hit the "Devils Staircase". It really was like walking up to hell. Just when it looks like you are about to finish with the stairs, you turn a corner and there are a hundred more stairs to climb. It felt like it would never end. The joke of it was, once it did end we decided to do something even harder!!

In the book, The Lord of the Rings, at the end Frodo and Sam throw the ring into Mount Doom to destroy it. Well, in the movies, that scene was filmed at Mt Ngauruhoe, which is in the Tongariro Crossing. So, it has become pretty popular for people to summit the mountain. This was one of the main reasons that Dave wanted to do the Crossing, so off we went. It was one of the hardest climbs I've ever done. It was basically scree the entire way up, so for every step you take forward you pretty much slide the same distance back down the hill. It was hard, but it was totally worth it. The view from the top was amazing - we had a great clear day and you could see pretty far. Going down was wayyyyyyy easier than the climb up. We basically just slid down the scree all the way and it took us about a quarter of the time to get down as it did to get up. And now we can say that we have climbed Mt Doom!!!

Exhausted and not even at the top yet

 

When we were going down the mountain we started hearing people higher than us yelling "rock" so we looked up and saw this rock, about the size of a beachball, falling down the hill. It missed us by a little bit but there were 2 more people further down the hill from us who weren't paying attention. We joined into the "rock" call and managed to get the attention of a girl - she got out of the way and the rock flew behind her. But further down the mountain there was a guy sitting down resting and he wasn't hearing us. Everyone started yelling louder because the rock looked like it was going right for him. At almost the very last second he finally looked up and leaned forward as the rock flew just behind him. Honestly, if he hadn't leaned forward, that 30-40 lb rock, flying down the mountain, would have hit in right in the side or in the head. He was soo lucky! It was really scary, but it definitely worked out for the best.

The rest of the crossing wasn't nearly as hard as the Devils Staircase or Mt Doom, but it was just as spectacular! There was the Red Crater, which is a huge red crater from a previous volcanic eruption. It was very pretty! Then you walk a little further and find the lakes. There was the Emerald Lake and the Blue Lakes. These are beautifully clear little bodies of water on top of these mountains that are pretty much just rain fed. Some of their colours were so vivid and beautiful! The last couple of hours of the hike were a little boring to be honest. You are just walking through bush, which is beautiful, but both Dave and I were in so much pain by the end that we just wanted it to be over. One of my hip flexors was screaming by the end of the day and both of Dave's knees where bothering him. We felt so old by the end of the day. It was a long day - almost 9 hours of hiking - but it was totally worth it. It was so beautiful, and challenging!

Red Crater, Ngarahoe and Mount Ruapehu in the background

We stayed in a little town at the south end of Lake Taupo that night, called Turangi. We had showers, ate and slept for 12 hours that night. We were both totally gassed after our big day on the Crossing. From Turangi we drove to Rotorua because we had a few activities planned there. We stayed outside of town for 2 nights, which we were happy about. We weren't too impressed with the actual town of Rotorua. It felt a little unsafe to us, but everything we did in and around the town was awesome.

We had one full day there, and we managed to pack a lot in. We started out with some whitewater rafting down the Kaituna river. This is known in New Zealand because you go over a 7m waterfall during the trip. Neither Dave nor I have ever done whitewater rafting, so we were both a little nervous about the thought of a 7m waterfall, but it was awesome! We were in a raft with Stevie, who was the best tour guide in the company. He has worked for them since they opened pretty much and he was so awesome. We felt completely safe with him and he made it really fun and interesting. He was a Maori guy also, so he added a lot of Maori culture into the day. That was probably one of my favourite parts of the day. They start you off nice and slow and you only go over 1m and 2m high rapids, while they teach you a few skills. Then the big one comes. I was terrified about falling out of the boat and getting trapped underneath the raft, but we successfully made it over without our boat flipping at all. Since we were in Stevie's boat we always went first into all the rapids. So we got to watch the other 3 boats go over the waterfall. One other boat made it successfully. Another boat flipped completely and everyone fell out and started flowing down the river. We got to help rescue them, which was fun. In the 4th boat, they made it over fine, but one woman basically wasn't holding on at all, so she bounced out of the boat. It was kind of hilarious to watch actually, but she was a little terrified so we had to help get her back into her boat also. Since we didn't fall out, Stevie decided to flip the boat over on us so we could try getting back into the raft. It wasn't so bad when you know it was coming. He also let us swim down a few small rapids and play in the water a little bit also. All in all it was an awesome trip!

That evening we also did a Maori experience just outside of town at the Tamaki Village. It was a whole evening, where they pick you up and bring you to a rebuilt Maori village where you learn about different parts of their culture - games, music, dance, the Haka, and the main event, the hangi, which is a meal prepared underground on hot rocks. There were probably 4 buses of people that made their way to the Tamaki village. Each bus was supposed to pick a man to represent their bus, or "waka", at the village as Chief. After a minute or two of complete quiet on our bus, Dave volunteered. So, he was known as Chief Rawiri (Maori for Dave) for the rest of the night!

The night started with a welcome ceremony. The 4 Chiefs from the different buses all had to stand at the centre of the entrance way to the village during the ceremony. It starts with 4 men from the village coming to challenge the visiting Chiefs to make sure that they come in peace. This involves some spears and tongues and bulging eyes...they caution you before you arrive not to smile or mimic or laugh during the ceremony because it is seen as a sign of disrespect. It was really interesting to watch and the Chiefs did a good job so they let us enter the village. You then spend an hour or so learning about how the Maori used to live. From there they put on a show of different cultural dances, songs and stories. All of this was topped off with an amazing dinner. We had such a fun night and Chief Rawiri did an excellent job representing our waka! On the way home on the bus Dave had to chat at the front and tell everyone about himself and sing "I'm a Little Tea Pot". Then it turned into a huge sing-a-long the rest of the way home with Dennis, our bus driver, leading the way. It was awesome.

One of the maori warriors at the opening ceremony

 

The next day we made our way over to the east coast of the north island to a town called Napier. It is known because of a huge earthquake that happened in 1931 that resulted in a fire that destroyed the town. The town decided to rebuild in the style of the 1930's, rather then rebuild the way it had looked before the disaster. So, now it is known as the Art Deco capital because a ton of the town is built in that style. Our timing was pretty awesome also because once a year they host an Art Deco weekend, where thousands of people come to the city in old cars and dress like flappers and pretend like their living in the 30's. It was so cool....I really want a flapper dress now! hahaha. We did an art deco tour of the town, then went to an antique fair and then just spent the rest of our time there people watching. It was so amazing to see how into the theme everyone gets. They say that if you're not dressed in costume, then you will feel like the person who is left out.

Everyday Napier

Unfortunately we didn't get to stay the whole weekend - it would have been so much fun to experience it and have an excuse to buy a costume. But we had a very important visitor coming to Wellington for the weekend and we had to make our way there...we were really excited!

The Fellowship...

We left Wellington and decided to make our way up the west coast of the north island. My sister and her husband spent a year working and travelling in New Zealand in 2005-2006, so they had a ton of contacts for us. We decided to head out of Wellington and make our way to New Plymouth to visit their friends Craig and Toni and their kids Hunter and Jaimee.

Our first day driving up the west coast wasn't very eventful. We spent a few hours in the car just trying to cover some ground and make it close to New Plymouth. We did stop in a little town called Otaki for an hour or so because it had tons of outlet stores and I couldn't help myself. We ended up at the Kathmandu and the Icebreaker outlets. Dave and I both limited ourselves to one item, but man it was hard. Almost everything was 50% off or more and it was all so pretty!!!

From Otaki we found a place to stay. We decided to try our hand at freedom camping so we looked into a few different free campsites that had public toilets on site. We found one that was a little off the main road and it had a toilet so we were set. We made dinner and we were starting to get ready for bed when this random car pulled up. I didn't hear it, but out of nowhere Dave said he heard someone walking around outside of our van and sure enough we looked outside and there was a man roaming around. Dave got out and started to make conversation with him while he pretended to be getting water for us. The man said that his dog ran away in the area earlier in the day and he was just looking for her - a golden lab named Goldy. The fishy part was that he wasn't calling for her or whistling or anything dog like. We offered to take his number and call if we saw a dog roaming around but he said he was just going home quickly to pick up some stuff then he would be back to spend the night. He left and we were totally freaked out. Needless to say we decided to move our van. So, here it is close to midnight and we are trying to find a place to stay for the night. We did and we quickly went to sleep!

The next morning we woke up and made some friends with the other couple staying at the same site. They had sold their house and moved into this wicked bus that they converted to a campervan. It was massive and had these amazing real hardwood doors on the bus. We had breakfast with them and then we were on our way.

The rest of our day was spent driving the rest of the way to New Plymouth. We got to drive around Mt Taranki. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a cloudy day so we couldn't see the top, but it was pretty neat to see this flat landscape with this massive cone shaped mountain in the middle of it.

We made a few other stops at little towns and beaches along the way then ended up in New Plymouth with Craig, Toni, Hunter and Jaimee. They were such a sweet family and so nice to have us stay with them. We got to play with the kids a bit before bed (Dave was heavy into a cricket match with Hunter until he had to go to bed), then we had adult time and ate dinner and watched the Olympics. It was awesome!

Craig and Hunter

 

The next day was a Wednesday, so obviously everyone had to go to school and work. Dave and I had a bit of a lazy morning sleeping in and watching the Olympics. Then we made our way into town and did some shopping and sightseeing. We got to see this bridge that was built in 2008 and won Best Bridge award that same year. It is a nice bridge...it looks sort of like a wave and if you look from one end to the other on a nice clear day, it frames Mt Taranaki, which was pretty cool to see!

Our night pretty much consisted of the same thing - playing with the kids before bed, then dinner and Olympics afterwards. It was so awesome to get to know Craig and Toni. They were super nice and welcoming and we had a great time visiting.

The next morning we decided to head out of New Plymouth and continue our adventures in Matamata. We said our goodbye's over the breakfast table and then started our trek across the island. But first we had to check out Pukekura Park - something both Craig and Toni recommended we did before leaving town. We are really glad that they highly suggested it because it was awesome! It was this huge park right in the middle of the city that had so much to offer. It had this awesome cricket pitch with the stands build right into the grassy hillside that surrounds it. It had tons of ponds and walking tracks, waterfalls, a cafe, a stage (where Craig and Toni got married) and a fernery. The woman at the cafe suggested we stop by there. It was a beautiful greenhouse with so many ferns and flowers in it. Just gorgeous. We were sad we couldn't stay longer but Matamata awaited.

You see, Dave is a Lord of the Rings fan and they filmed quite a bit of those movies at a specific location in Matamata. Hobbiton, the Hobbit village in the movies, was filmed on a farm just outside the town. Originally, the sets were made of crappy materials because they were supposed to be torn down at the end of filming. But, because of bad weather, they never were. People in the area were watching the LOTR movie and noticed a familiar background in a 3 seconds clip and they were able to guess which farm it was filmed on, so they went knocking on the owners door. This started a massive tourism business for this family. When Peter Jackson started filming the Hobbit movie, they decided to tear down the old crappy set and build a brand new replica of Hobbiton with better materials that would last over time. They have now set up this tour business, that shuttles hundreds of people through in a day to see the set from the movie.

We managed to get ourselves on one of the first tours to leave the next day, which was an excellent idea because by the end of our tour there were so many people there it was crazy. It was actually a pretty cool thing to do. I am not a LOTR fan - I haven't seen all of the movies or read any of the books, but I still loved the tour. This town that they built was so real and lifelike - the hobbit holes, the Green Dragon bar, the party tree, etc. It was all so real! And to hear some of the hilarious stories from our guide. Like, they use a program called CGI for a lot of the effects in the movie - but apparently, making shadows is really difficult to do with the program so they made a huge fake tree out of individual leaves brought in from Taiwan and wired to a fake tree base to make a real tree shadow that was seen for 3 seconds in the film. The amount of money and detail they put into this franchise is unreal!!! The best part of the tour was getting to have a drink in the Green Dragon pub that they have remade to look exactly like the pub from the movie. We had a beer out of these great old steins and it was awesome. Such a cool day.

Bag End... No big deal

 

From Matamata we decided to make our way down to Taupo because the weekend was supposed to be beautiful and somewhere along the way I had agreed to go skydiving there....ahhhhh! On our way into town we checked out the Huka Falls. It was a little underwhelming because it isn't so much of a huge waterfall as it is a very powerful one. But it was neat to see none-the-less. Then we arrived in Taupo and I spent most of the day hoping that a huge storm would roll in the next day so I wouldn't have to be a chicken and backout. Unfortunately, we woke the next morning in our caravan park to clear blue skies and a gentle breeze - apparently the perfect weather to jump out of a plane and plunge to your death. I was absolutely terrified, but it was always something on my bucket list and now I had the opportunity to do it, so I did. They barely gave you any training - all they taught you before letting you jump out of an airplane (attached to a skydive master, of course) was to keep your head back, your legs bent and hang onto the harness when you are leaving the plane. That's it! Then they suited us up and off we went into the airplane.

Since this was going to be the one and only time I would ever be jumping out of an airplane I decided to get a video of it. My dive master, Marley, got to interview me along the way and he video taped a lot of the dive, which is hilarious to watch now. I swear like a sailor...such a potty mouth!! But seriously, the first instant when you are suspended outside of the airplane was terrifying, as was when Marley started loosening straps once the parachute opened for a 'more comfortable" ride down. Other than that it was just surreal. You sort of felt like you were falling but you didn't really feel like you were about to die. All in all I'm glad I did it, but I never need to do it again. And you will all die laughing at me when I show you this video when we're home!

We are heading to Tongariro National Park tomorrow to do the Tongariro Crossing...fingers crossed for more nice weather!!!

xoxoxox