hanhan131 blog: NZ Trip

Day 4

After a long day, we slept in and upon waking up, my body especially the legs were sore to the point where I was pretty much dragging myself around! But with $50 per 15min late fee for checking out we thought we’d better hurry. So by 10.10am we were out and about in Taupo. We had brunch at one of the many café shops there. I had a croissant filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese and tomatoes. Sounds good doesn't it?! Unfortunately for me I rediscovered that I couldn’t eat half cooked scrambled eggs - the addition of cheese to the mix just made it worse. I was glad to leave the restaurant for our leisure 2 hours hike to Huka Falls along the Waikato River (this is the longest river in NZ and drains off Lake Taupo).

When we arrived there, we realized that this was not actually a hike, it was more of a walk on unpaved ground without any shade. This in addition to it been a hot and bright sunny day with UV index of 14 such that your exposed skin literally stung after a few moments in the sun made us change our plans. Like most folks, we drove to the falls. It was a good decision may I add. At Huka Falls the river flow was fast and furious! It was so loud that to talk one had to shout. This reminded me of when we went hiking in John Forrest National Park back in Aus. We planned to see the waterfall so we walked along a creek. As we were walking, we realized that something was very wrong - the creek was dry. So was there be a waterfall upstream? nope. It was certainly nice to be in a more lively place!

Huka Falls on Waikato River

We then drove to our hotel for the following 3 days. It was over $160/day so I had quite high expectations. When we arrived there, we were surprised to see a 2 story high cottage. The number of guest rooms would not have exceeded 6. It was run by a couple and pretty soon we learnt that they were our hosts. This was going to be somewhat awkward! We would have to leave our shoes by the front door, make sure that the rooms were clean and orderly, not make too much noises at night etc. One of the benefits of this place was that they serve complimentary breakfast but of course these were to be prepared by our hosts. They asked us what we wanted for breakfast the next morning. Other than continental, there was hot breakfast with a choice of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomato and mushrooms. Urhh of course I wanted everything (pretty sure bix wanted the same thing) but we politely only picked 2 from the above choices. I thought, who could possibly ask for everything. Yet sure enough, the following morning we were having breakfast on a dinning table shared with other guests, two of them were munching away on their full selection of hot breakfast - I imagined myself eating that plate of food whilst sadly looking at my own humble selection.

Day 5

Yes! The day had finally come for our epic Tongariro Alpine Crossing hike - and what a great way to kick off the New Year!!

We left early via shuttle and at around 8.30am we arrived at Mangatepopo, the beginning of the Crossing. The suggested time for this hike is 7hours and it's a strenuous hike on volcanic terrains with no sun cover. We will be passing 2 volcanoes, Mount Tongariro and her larger sister Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings). We can also climb the mountains as we see fit. I was so excited to begin this! I've being waiting for this for so long! And it did not disappoint. The breathtaking view along the way was surreal and unearthly. The magnificent volcano Mt Ngauruhoe stood tall and strong and towered over Mt Tongariro (actually I couldn’t make out where her peak was). There was the South Crater filled with a yellow lake, the deep Red Crater with fumaroles venting hot fumes and not to mention, the beautiful Emerald Lakes. There were three of them each with different shades of turquoise. The color originates from dissolved minerals brought to the surface from deep within the earth. During the hike, there were some long climbs up on unstable volcanic terrain with loose tephra. It was rather daunting for me since I'm a chicken when it comes to height so I tried not to look back. But as with everything in life, where there are ups there will be downs. We soon arrived at the major descent. I took one look and thought, you gotta be kidding - this is way too steep! I knew I had to do it so I inched down sideways as if in slow motion snow boarding. After awhile, I wasn't that scared anymore especially after seeing others literally skiing down the descent, so I took larger steps and finished the descent pretty fast. I waited for bix longer than usual to finish this part of the hike, every few minutes I'd look up to see where she was only to find that she was at the same position as before :P.

Mount Ngauruhoe and South Crater with bix

The ascent to Red Crater

The treacherous descent down

In front of two beautiful Emerald Lakes

I was then busting to go to the toilet so I dashed to the next stop, Ketetahi Hut. Along the way I thought my bladder may just burst - damn, how convenient it would be if I was a guy! After I got there, I doubled back to walk with bix and later we had a relaxing lunch at the hut. We thought we could take it easy because we still had 2 hours left before the shuttle arrives and the suggested finishing time was 2hours. But unlike the conservative prediction for the Lake Waikaremoano Great Walk, this prediction turned out to be rather tight. We ended up being 20min late for our shuttle back and everyone was waiting for us.

After we got up the shuttle, a guy came sat next to us and told us that he informed the driver to wait up for us. We thanked him, he was really talkative so a conversation started. It was quite interesting because he seems to be knowledgable with almost everything. So we shouldn't have been so shocked to find out that he is a radio host for Radio NZ. Apparently Radio NZ is similar to ABC - the number 1 news radio station in Australia. His brother who is a professor in Ohio said to me that it’s similar to NPR in US - NPR? no clue (currently have my car radio tuned to NPR :)). I liked the professor's character. He asked us if we were tired and said he was quite tired himself. I would have assumed that he was probably not fit if it won't for the radio host who added that it's because his brother also climbed Mt Ngauruhoe! The detour to climb Mt Ngauruhoe can be dangerous and is extremely strenuous. Most people would have just boasted about it.

Day 6

On this beautiful and sunny day bix and I went canoeing on Whanganui River. Wades Landing, whom we booked to be canoeing with couldn’t take us because their jet boat was just broken (we planned to canoe down the river and jet boat up). So the lady there helped us to call other places and off we went to another canoeing place 45min down the road. This place was much busier with tons of people running around. Soon we discovered that it was run by a family with 5 children. The teenage boys all tried to be cool while their little girl ran around acting as a host making coffee for the guests. They also had several handymen one of whom was a stereotypical Frenchman with a beret and pretty bad English. He suggested for us to ‘taste’ the lifejacket to see if they fit! I asked him rhetorically ‘you want us to taste it?!’ he nodded. Later someone asked the French guy what's his job in France, but he couldn't understand it at all. This unfruitful exchange carried on for sometime, so I translated it ‘Quesque c’est votre travaille?’ and he immediately understood, excuse my grammar slash spelling but it felt good to know another language :) I may just go back to learning some French in my spare time!

After bumming around for an hour or so waiting for them to get everything ready - we were finally off to canoeing. In the true family style, we were driven by their personal vehicles down to the river bank. There they taught us the basics of canoeing. The person at the back steers and does most of the paddling while the person at the front pretty much just paddles. Steering was interesting - you can either back paddle on the side where you want to turn to (I found this gave sharp turns) or you can simply do normal paddling on the opposite side where you want to turn (this gave smoother wider turns). During rapids, we were supposed to keep on paddling, if you panic and stop paddling that's when the canoe would be most likely to tip over!

Off we went on our canoeing escapade. After a short while of paddling, we arrived at our first rapid. As we approached we could clearly see how unstable and fast the river was flowing. Needless to say it was a little frightening but mostly exhilarating as we paddled our way through it. During this, the canoe rocked from side to side and water splashed in from all sides. Then our canoe became stuck between some rocks. We tried to paddle ourselves out but to no avail. So being the quintessential hero that I am, I jumped out of the boat, stepped into the fast current onto the river bed and pushed us out of a very sticky situation. We canoed for about 3hours (it was quite tiring actually), stopped at a lavender farm along the way, had some pastry, I got scratched by a cat, and we continued our way to the finish.