The Tongariro Crossing

Caves - Turangi - Tongariro - Campground

Having finished our caving journey at Waitomo, we gave a ride to a couple girls from Vancouver that had also been in our tour. We also had a super good chat with our guide. He was from NZ, and had been leading outdoor expedition type things sincd high school as his career after a diploma at a tech school on outdoor expeditions or something. I'm pretty sure it's what I need to go into. He's leaving soon to lead expeditions up Mount Fuji, and has done lots of rafting and kayaking jobs before. He usually hitches to and from work, so we gave him a ride home.

After 2 very tiring hours driving in the dark, we made it to a free campsite/parking lot near Turangi and got our cooking gear out while closeby neighbours slept in their fancy, hitop, luxury campervans.

The next morning we were greeted by black swans on the water off the wharf. If only my black coffee were as pleasent as they were. That day, the coffee was too much and I dumped it out after 5 sips.

First Falls we walked to for Church

We drove into Turangi Sunday morning playing 'who can find the best church' (ok not actually best, just something similar to what we believe & practice). We were looking for something similar to a Church of Christ & somewhere that was having communion since that's important to us. We eventually found a multi-denominational church, (methodist, protestant & anglican) that we knew was having communion (& a tea afterwards too! Bonus). Niether one of us could remember exactly what each of these denominations believed or practiced and we didnt want to use up all our data googling each of them so we went the old fashioned route & decided to find out by trying it. Once we got inside we made up our minds. Maybe leaving was the wrong thing to do, we werent quite sure, but we just didn't feel comfortable with some of the things they were doing and felt much better about the idea of having church on our own. I guess it wasn't worth the free tea afterwards after all..

Communion

Our hike map for the 2 days

So we had a good laugh about that and headed to the grocery store. We decided rather than be true church hoppers, & trying the next church we'd have a little church thing together down by the waterfalls we were going to hike to on the way to Wakapapa village. This made for a pretty neat church service on a little steam at the base of these small falls only a 10 minute hike from our car. So with our fizzy grape juice and whole wheat crackers we did our own little thing until a young couple with a baby came and I had nightmares about how brutal it could be to travel with a kid!

Taranaki Falls

We then drove into Wakapapa village and from there did a 1 hour 45 minute hike to Taranaki Falls. We were told there were several scenes from LOTR filmed at this hike, but we don't know which. These falls were incredible as well. The water was shooting out from a huge cliff into a nice basin at the bottom. With a 10 second timer on the camera, we set it up and then got a picture from in front of the falls of us underneath them. But 10 seconds is not enough to sprint over a bunch of wet rocks. When a couple from France offered to take our picture after laughing at our timer-sprint attempt it turned out much nicer.

Upon returning to our van slightly tired, we wondered how exhausting a 7 hour hike up a volcano would be as this was our plan for the next day!

Volcanic Rock by the path

One of our plans before even coming to NZ was to hike the Tongariro Crossing (or Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings) and today was the day. After sleeping from 830-430, we woke up before dawn to get to the shuttle that would take us to our hiking trail. It was a 19 km hike one way and we wanted to start nice and early! We had my big pack with all the food, snacks, 3L of water, med bag, etc which ended up weighing about 20 lbs (fruit, PB, and water are heavy!) and Milessa had a smaller bag with some water and some snacks. The hike started out beautiful. Nice weather, not to steep, you know, perfect hiking weather. Every one at the start was pretty quiet either because they were nervous or it was real early.

Lots of steep climbing

Eventually we took off in our pairs and I did everything I could to not make it a competition with the random people who started before us! As you begin, you go into a valley with volcanic rock everywhere and its easy to focus on the beautiful scenery. After 1.5 hours, we hit the first checkpoint toilet area and the rain started. We didn't know it then, but we wouldn't be dry agajn for 6 hours. A huge section of stairs began and we got tired pretty quick, but the stairs never ended. After going up and up for a while, we'd look up and see people far ahead & far above us in the distance. It was quite discouraging. After going up for a very long time, we came to a huge desert-plateau area with lots of crosswind and rain. Our hands started freezing as it was around zero. After more stairs and some cliffs we walked by, our jackets started soaking through and it was feeling like a real battle. Soon the waterproof hiking shoes soaked through and there was no dry part on us. About 9 km in, we had a choice to get to the Tongariro summit (Mount Doom) or begin the 10 towards our warm dry van. No one else was going to the summit because the visibility was less than 75 meters and it was freezing, windy, and rainy. But we decided another 1.5 hours added on was worth it to say we hiked Mount Doom! After years of maintaining Frodo was a big whiner, I take it back. I had that whiny grosse face on for ahout 5 hours this day. We're pretty sure we made it to the summit, because there were no more markers in site. It would have been easy to get lost because of how foggy it was!

Crazy enough to do the extra distance

Back on the regular trail, we felt slightly energized, for about 5 minutes until we had more uphill to do. Later on, while the miserable cold continued, there was a large group of people chatting and eating and laughing by a lake in a crater. Being rather depressed at this point, Milessa wanted to visit where they were because "it looks happy there! They look happy!". Turns out we were a bit sheltered by the wind there but not much. They were misleading us with their laughter as to how nice it was.

Weird flat area near the top of the crossing

The next 3 hours were mostly downhill (literally) and our knees and ankles started feeling it. We were very motivated to be done and cruised passed many people on the way. The scenery also had many cool changes from volcanic to dessert to shrubs to field to thick forest/jungle.

Completed

By the end of the 22 km of Tongariro Crossing, we were beat. I dont think anyone else was stupid enough to do the extra 3 km to the summit, and we coukdnt blame them. 7.5 hours later, it was possibly the hardest challenge I'd ever had. Physically and mentally. Because unlike a 20 mile run, there was no stopping. Once you were up the mountain, you had to get down yourself, you couldn't just give up. Then there was the endless stairs. On a nice day it would have been tough but not terrible. But today, we were soaking through every layer, hands weren't working, sopping feet, freezing everywhere. It was almost unbearable! But so much fun, and so worth it! It was such a great challenge, and we climbed Mount Doom! Milessa is still not quite at the happy memory stage that I'm at, hopefully she'll come around!

Post wet day stay warm fashion

After completing the crossing we headed out to find a campsite for the night. After a few failed attempts at free campsites that sad they had washrooms but didn't actually we ended up paying for one just outside of Palmerston North. We spent the next day doing some much needed laundry washing & getting dried off. So many of our clothes were wet from the hike that the next morning when it was chilly outside we both had to put on all our remaining clothes to stay warm, which made for quite the fashion statment. Luckily it warmed up outside so we didn't have to dress like this for too long. After a very challenging hike & a good day of drying off we were ready to head to Wellington for the remainder of the week.

Us - at the start, the middle & the end

Made it to the top of Mount Doom

It's your hair salon Karina in Palmerston North!

Mud Pools, Hobbiton & Caving Adventures.

Our Route... Rotorua to Matamata to Waitomo

Like I said, we just had rice and beans, which we both dislike, but are learning to like. They also seemed like a reasonably healthy meal choice after eating noodles, oats, PBJ sandwiches, and canned chicken sandwiches most other days! We've also gotten incredible at cooking toast over a camping stove, it's more of art to us really.

That night we paid a Backpackers X-Base (hostel) in Rotorua to sleep in their parking lot and use showers, etc. Once you are in big cities in NZ, everything costs. For example, libraries have become our best friends because they [usually] allow free wifi and computer. In Rotorua, however, you've got to pay to use computers, internet, most wifi, and parking spots anywhere. This also meant no free camping within 50 km of the city. Hence paying a hostel to park there.

Mud Pools

The one thing we are missing out on with staying in our campervan is meeting more travellers like we would if we were staying in hostels and couchsurfing our way around NZ. So using this hostel was nice because we got to meet a really nice gal from Montreal! She had just finished law school but at her completion, was not convinced she could do that job for life, and so set off on a backpacking trip for a while to work here in NZ & travel around a bit. We're hoping she is able to find what she wants to do while she travels NZ by herself!

The next morning was odd. When you're in Winnipeg or Regina and you go to a park (Assinaboine or Wascana for example), you expect lots of paths, trees, open space, picnic tables... you know, park-ee stuff. But instead this park in Rotorua was filled with thermal mud and water pools all over! When you walked around, you saw steam coming up from out the ground and bushes everywhere you looked. It reminded me of that scary swamp forest in The Princess Bride... anyone remember the name? Fire Swamp maybe? It was so bizarre; and stinky. The whole rotten egg sulphur thing again. The little mud pools were bubbling over like a pot of thick paste boiling on your stove. Weirdest park ever.

It's a really big tree

California Redwood

                          Next we headed to the California Redwood Forest. Why there is a pocket of California Redwoods in this little area in NZ I have no idea. But they were massive! Not quite the width of the Kauri trees [actually nowhere near the width) but they were extremely tall. The largest ones in this forest are around 220 feet tall & 66.5 inches in diameter. The track we took through the forest was about an hour walk. This was also the place we first found out that our rain jackets are merely water resistant and not water proof. Thefe's a difference. Little travel tip, spend the extra money and get water proof stuff so that your clothes underneath don't get wet in the rain when you have nowhere to dry them...or a $2 poncho :)

Fake tree made for LOTR

Like Bilbo

We were then off to Matamata to see Hobbiton the following day! We stayed the night at another free site at a musuem parking lot just north of town. Ok it wasn't actually free, it was NZ$5 in an honesty box- which we did put money in, thanks to Milessa...

In Matamata later that night, we stopped in at a local cafe and had some very strong coffee and mango tea while the owner chatted with us and everyone else in the place. So many of the people are so friendly.

Like Gandalf

The next morning, we took the tour through Hobbiton, which was pretty cool. Milessa might have liked it more than me because the houses are just so stinking cute. The hobbit houses are all built to different sizes to make people appear bigger or smaller through the camera (Gandalf size or Hobbit size) which was neat to see. Also, guess where we met a guy from? Watson, Saskatchewan. That little town 2 hours north of Regina where Milessa sees a chiropractor. He's been working in Perth for a couple years and we just happened to meet him on this tour. Told you it was a small world. Watson has like 500 people.

After Hobbiton, we learned the importance of planning ahead- the ferry from north to south island had almost booked up until after the 20th of April, 4 days after we were planning. The only tickets available were double our planned price ($400 vs $200) or in the night when you could not see any of the scenery. Usually 2 weeks ahead is enough time but apparently a school break is starting at Easter which means ferrys book up earlier and costs go up. Costs being higher than what we anticipated seem to be a theme of NZ. Anyways, we got tickets on the 19th for $303 in the evening. Ouch. I definitely had my grumpy face on after that shananigan.

Before we got wet

Our campsite between Matamata and Waitomo that night allowed us a piece of home. Maybe my favourite joke will enlighten you. Me: Knock-knock... You: Who's there?... Me: Cowp... You: Cowpoo? Yep. Once we got our bed set up, the canopy out the back, nice and comfortable we got a nice big wiff of cow poo so we drove a little closer to the river.

On the way to Waitomo, we went through a small town called Cambridge, which happened to be where the royals, Kate & Will, were also heading through that day. That made for an extremely busy little town with many roads blocked off and the I-site closed. After much contemplating on whether or not we had time to wait for the royal drive by, we decided we had to get to Waitomo and not miss our tour in the caves as we plan on catching them in Wellington anyways.

Eel we touched

Going down... down... down

Hanging 100 feet up

One of the big things here in NZ is the Waitomo glowworm caves. It's one of the things that most people try to see in NZ. Our tour started at 3 pm and included a 100 foot abseil straight down into this wicked huge cave, tubing in an underground river, doing some caving, seeing glowworms, and climbing back up the cave wall to outside. It was an amazing experience. Apparently in Waitomo there is about 300 caves that have been surveyed, marked, and examined. But there's another 300-400 that no one has ever seen. So as you drive along in these hilly farmers fields there are entrances to caves all over the place, but you'd never know it because so many of them drop straight down in the ground. Kind of scary if you ever were wanting to roll down any hills! In all of these limestone tunnels are million of glowworms- which are actually just a specific type of maggot that hang in these tunnels. In the total darkness, it looks like green stars in the night sky and it's absolutely brilliant. There are also big cave spiders, eels, and Weta's(looks like a spider but with 6 legs). All pretty grosse, fyi. Anyways, check out the pictures because trying to explain it really won't do it justice. Milessa really overcame some serious fears here and I was so proud of her for doing all this crazy stuff with me!

Really small

We fit in really small spaces

1 km into the cave

Glowworms... or stars?

 

The cave we abseiled in from below

Our only way out

Afraid of water? Wear socks.





For anyone who remembered that we were in Tairua, it's the greatest town ever. It seemed like half of the people we saw walked around the whole town in barefeet. Kids, adults, grammas, people working at the markets, everyone. It's hilarious. Bana Goldsmith should move to this place. Anyways, after Tairua, we went to this hot water beach. It is warmed from underground and you hire a shovel and dig around in certain spots looking for the really hot water and sand to sit in. The beach like this in Ensenada, Mexico that Patty Kunkle took us to around new years was much better than this one... there was so many people here! Like to the point you could barely walk around because people were all crowding around the hot spots and finding hot water and digging little pools for themselves, wow it was hilarious. We then found a little free campsite on the beach in Bowentown after driving these incredibly windy roads in the mountains through the dark. That morning we got to see how beautiful it was really was at this free campsite. We hiked around this little hill down to an amazing beach that was bordered with massive amounts of volcanic rick which made for great climbing, for both Milessa and me. From there we went through Waihi, which is a town with a massive open pit gold mine right in the centre and was the original reason many people came to New Zealand. Other mining tunnels in the Karangahake Gorge were amazing as well. You wouldn't believe how dark and quiet it is 100 meters into a underground tunnel it is. The fact that people used to work in there for hours everyday is ridiculous, all to find some gold. Also, I swear that everything in Zelda is named after something in New Zealand. Karangahake Gorge? Kakarioke Gorge? Come on. Actually there's been way more Zelda appearances too, but this one was the most blatent, especially when you see how similar they kind of look. So because rock climbing and going into the tunnels in the gorge wasn't tiring enough, we decided that hiking a dormant volcano at Mount Manganui was a good idea. 200 meters tall, it was a about 30 minute hike up. However while we were climbing all of these stairs, locals were treating this as their training ground for marathons. This one old guy cruised up and down this thing like 3 times or something. Definitely the most fit town I've been to in a very long time. And I'm from Regina so you know that's saying something. The next free campsite, and every one we have found so far, are all thanks to a 15$ App we got on our iPhone. It's called Camping NZ by Rankers. For anyone traveling here, get it. It shows us all of the free campsites, paid for campsites, reviews, directions, free activities, and it works with no internet. Anyways, after that shout-out to Rankers, this next site was about 20 minutes off of the main highway into the mountains, at Kaiate Falls Scenic Reserve. You know how hard it can be to wash your hair without running water? Well I suppose we had running water, but it was about 75 meters belew in the waterfall basin. So we ran down there before it got dark, filled up our chillybin with 20 Liters of water and hiked back up (so as not to contaminate the water with soap). I haven't been that tired in a while. And I sloshed away half of the water to boot. This allowed us to clean our hair by laying the ground and washing eachothers hair. We're no hairdressers, but it sure felt good to have a little head massage and finally have clean hair. Whether we wanted them or not, we were both on track to have dreads in no time. The following morning allowed us the best possible wake-up ever. A hike down to the falls led us to a beautiful little basin with some cliff jumping! Which I managed to coax Milessa into in spite of her outrageous fear. Wearing her socks while jumping in seemed to make her feel better for some reason. It was a beautiful little swimming hole. This day brought us to Rotorua, a town which smells fairly bad due to the sulphur coming up from underground. But we decided a stench due to underground volcanic-like activity was cooler than the stink of hog-barns and refineries that we're used to! The fun really started here as I convinced Milessa to come white-water rafting with me! You'll see in the picture how terrified she was. We were in a raft with 2 german girls and 2 Italian guys and a couple different guides. They have the best job in the world. Trevor Friesen, this is your next job and probably career. This particular river apparantly has the highest commercially rafted falls at 7 meters. It was super fun. With our rafting tickets, we were given spa passes to the Polynesian spa here. But within 5 minutes, we realized spas aren't really our thing, especially when it's warm outside. We were overheating. You just sit and relax? 5 or 10 minutes was enough for me. And they stunk like sulphur. Which, for those of you who don't know smells a lot like rotten eggs. Dinner tonight was beans and rice. YUUUMMMMYYY! Tomorrow Lord willing (and it seems fairly often that our wills do not coincide!) we'll be off to see some thermal mud pools and the California Redwood Forest. See ya later! As a side note, but not too much on the side because these are big deals, congratulations to a few people close to us back home! Starlet Peterson is soon to be Starlet Krogsgaard as she is now engaged to Kresten! Congratulations to them! And if you didn't know before why we are coming home halfway through our RTW, now you can know it's for their wedding! And secondly, we just found out that our friend Aynsley just got engaged to her now fiance Bryan! Congratulations to them from NZ as well! We are so excited for both of you! Well, actually all 4 of you I suppose.





Northshore & Coromandel



Cathedral Cove



Well this last couple of days since Auckland has been quite a runaround! I suppose that's what you sign up for when you travel anywhere you're unfamiliar with. We staretd off right though. Our first morning in Auckland we had read a post that a researcher need volunteers for 1 hour and you'd get 40$ each. Scam, right? Nope! 40$ for both of us! He was studying how easy it is for travellers to get around with Auckland without technology, so he gave a task list and places to go and things to do, and then he followed us around and recorded everything. He bought us coffee, and then handed us each 40$ for chillin with him! What a treat that was! At this point, quick shout out to DWAINE GAUTHIER for somehow buying Milessa a gift certificate to a nearby restaurant for her birthday! When we walked in and told them we were Dwaine Gauthier's son they were so pumped since they'd only talked to him on the phone! Then, the hard part started and we picked up our right hand drive rental campervan. I thought driving in mountains was fun, but driving in the moutains crazier than anything in Canada on the wrong side is even more fun! Obviously, Milessa had her share and small panics and screams and squeals occasionally, but we managed to stay alive. The next day, we drove through Wapaia Forest, where there is some of the largest trees in the world! Kauri trees. Like, I'm talking Avatar-sized trees. Check em out. The Tane Matua, Father of the Forest, was 16.4 meters around and was about 29.9 meters tall. The other one, slightly taller but not as big around, Tane Mahuta- Lord of the Forest, was 13.8 meters around, and 51.5 meters tall. There is also quite the abundance of free camp grounds here, which is good because petrol is burning through our tank like it's going outta style. The first site was nice and quiet in a marshy area surrounded by mountains, the next was off the highway in this little gorge hidden in very thick bush. It was creepy. And there only one car there, so we contemplated gettin outta there. But, we toughed it out and stayed the night. I also had to learn on the fly how to filet a fish. A fairly fresh snapper that an old Aussie gave me with some other tips on being in NZ. We got out our camping stove, cooked up the 2 Snapper, and filetted them just like he said, and it even turned out good! The next morning we met the one other guy in the campground- Lucas, from Austria. He's been scootin around here for 6 months and he had some great tips as well. Also, hackie sacs and badminton rackets just in case we got bored. Another falls drew us in later in the day, Whangerei Falls. Unreal. Church on Sunday was also great, but there were almost no Kiwis! They were mostly from the states, or the UK. The North Shore Church of Christ. They had a very tight knit family feel and made us feel pretty welcome. The coffee they provided was also infinitely better than the instant black coffee I have been drinking every morning... Today, we made our way to Cathedral Cove. You should look it up. That, and the surrounding bay area, might just be the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. With the thick greenery, deep blue ocean, rock faces, and islands everywhere you look, it was an amazing thing to see. It was quite the hike to it, about 40 minutes, but very worth. Especially since its right on the beach and I had the glorious opportunity to break my speedo. Man do pale legs glow in sunlight. Everyone at the back, including the couple from Canada who we started talking to because they had a MEC bag and must have been from Canada, can thank Ryan Husband for the opportunity they had to see the speedo in its trial run. And here are, about to go to the hot water beach, writing to you from Tairua public library. We will try to have another post slightly more frequently than once a week! See you!



Look up. You'll see my Avatar I swear.



From the other side





Driving right











Our campervan Rocket!