Too much time and too many disasters since I last wrote. At least that keeps it entertaining lol. This was where our previous good luck started to turn to shit. The bad weather continued to dog us on the North island and I think it rained virtually every day we were there for 3 weeks. Oh well. More on that later. We arrived in Rotorua and booked in for 3 nights as we still had a lot of time on our hands. We wanted to go cycling in the redwoods and to visit stuff, but as it was still caining down we decided to just visit the thermal parks in the city and the small Maori village they have there. Both of these are free and really nice. It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon and an enjoyable start to the place. The guy in the hostel wanted to upgrade us to a 4 bed dorm, but that we pay the difference. We said no it was ok and then he charged us for it anyway. I had to correct him and in the end Cannelle ended up in the four bed dorm. It was obvious they had made a fuck up and now wanted us to pay for the difference. Nice try. Oh well. Other than that the hostel was nice. Everything in Rotorua is very expensive so you kind of have to pick what to do. Everyone had told us that Hobbiton was a total waste of money, but only Cannelle had wanted to go in the first place. The rafting looked cool, but expensive given the bad weather. Kind of wish I had done that now. The only good weather was for the sunday so we decided to go and see Wai-O-Tapu that day and just chill on the saturday.
The hostel was a little bit of a party hostel and every morning you could find a used condom in the bathroom so somebody was having fun lol. Saturday came and we were bored so we decided to take what is now an ill fated walk to the Redwoods forest. For some unknown reason I brought my passport along with me and Cannelle had the camera but without a case. You can guess what happened next. Yep. We got hammered by a storm on our way to the Redwoods and had to abandon the walk halfway. Didn't even see them. When we got back the camera lens was jammed and it just whirred, said error and died. Shit. Then I looked at my passport. Just a little water damage, but some green ink had leaked and now one quarter of my face was green. Shit. Oh well maybe it will be gone by the morning. The priority at the time was the camera. We went out and bought a new one for about $250. Hopefully its an upgrade. We would test it the next day.
In the morning I had a look at my passport and my face was still green. After a bit of research it looked like this may be a problem for travelling. Hmm. Ok we would do the Tongariro as we were close and then go and see the airline in Auckland to check as we may need to get cracking on a new passport in the worst case scenario. Damn it. Not a passport problem again. They haunt me everywhere. We went to Wai-O-Tapu and what a beautiful place it is. Its well worth the money. Beautiful colours and just a stunning place. One of my students had been to 5 of them and said this was the best. Its really cool. Probably easily the highlight of the North island for us. You have the little terraces, the champagne pool and such an amazing range of colours that people mostly thought we had been editing our photos on photoshop. That is even with the shitty camera we had. We really didn't like the new camera and seemed to be paying money for an inferior new camera. That was depressing so we went back to the shop and swapped it for a $300 sony camera. That's what we have now and it was a great decision as for just $50 extra we got a significant upgrade on our old camera. Had a much better zoom, is equal on colours and can shoot in lowlight, which were the two weaknesses of our old camera. I was starting to panic a little regarding the passport now, but we were off to Taupo the next day. Have to wait and see.
We got to Taupo, which is not very impressive. Its just a large lake. I have no idea why it is so famous except for the fact that its a lake and its big. We booked transport for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing the next day as we had wanted to do the full Northern Circuit, but there was no point with this crappy weather. Then we walked to Huka Falls, which is really beautiful and well worth the walk. The water colour is really pretty and the new camera got a good workout. We then walked all the way to a hot springs and decided not to go in as it was too expensive. Having walked back to town we went to bed early as we had to get up at 5.30am for the Tongariro Crossing.
We got up at 5am and went out to wait for the bus. We were with a German guy and a girl from Hong Kong. 5.30am came and went. Oh well we will be picked up after. 5.45am. Ok its a little late. 6am. Ok now I am worried. I went and called the girl working. Where was the bus? She came back sheepishly 5 minutes later and said
"I'm really sorry, I forgot to phone it through". What? "Can the bus come back?" "No". What?
She offered us a free night of accommodation but that was no good as we all had to leave the next day and I had the passport to sort out. Then we had a little conversation like this.
"Well can't you find someone to drive us to the start?"
"Erm, no I can't drive"
"Then whose truck is that out the front?"
"The owners"
"Well can't you phone him to see if he can drive us?"
"I would prefer to pay for a taxi to get you there"
"Ok well you will have to as its not good enough otherwise"
Apparently I forced her to book the taxi and Cannelle reckoned that noone else would have pushed it for her to sort us out with a ride. The taxi cost $300 one way to the start of the route. It was definitely the most expensive taxi ride that I have ever taken. I think she paid with her own money as well but I am not sure. When we got in the taxi, the taxi driver asked if we knew how much it was going to cost. I said yeah $300 but its not our money. He said that he was super lucky. Yeah. One hours work for $300. Nice work if you can get it. Anyway we got the taxi ride out there and we only started the trek about 30 minutes after everyone else and we would catch and overtake almost all of them on the trail. Now I had been super pumped for this walk as it looked stunning and I had really high expectations for it along with the Routeburn. The Routeburn did not disappoint. How would this walk be?
Well we never really found out. We had a mist with us for the whole walk. That meant we never had more than 50-100m visibility although this moved with us. Until we hit the top. Then it dropped to 20-50m and we could barely see anything. You could see the volcanic landscape and it looked nice, but to see how bad it was I can tell you that we couldn't even see Mt Doom. This is a mountain that sticks up 500m above us, just off the route and we couldn't see it. We couldn't see the red crater very well either. We saw some of the turquoise lakes and they are stunning. At least we got something. The wind and rain whipping us around the top was unpleasant and I began to suffer from mild hypothermia. This was not pleasant at all. Everyone was moving super fast. We walked alongside the blue lake and couldn't even see it was blue. The mist was down as a wall. Shitty. It was the German guys first hiking experience, but I told him not to worry as this was the worst hike for conditions that I had ever done. We wouldn't have done it that day if it wasn't for the fact that the weather forecast for the next two weeks was equally shitty and we had the pressing issue of the passport to deal with. We got to the final shelter and holed up for 2 hours to avoid the rain, though we couldn't avoid the cold. It was freezing. Horrendous. We had to hole up there as we were far too early for the buses. When we finished we shot down to the carpark and had done the whole crossing in around 4 hours. Shit weather gives you wings. The bus driver told us we didn't have to pay because the hostel had fucked up. At least that was a bonus. We had paid just the deposit of $5 for a taxi ride and a bus back to Taupo. Made up a bit for the shitty conditions, but what a shame. We didn't see much, the weather was awful, I froze to death and I would still say it was worth it. Now imagine how good the walk would be if you had great weather. So many people said it was the highlight for them. I would imagine its an awesome walk and maybe one day I will get the chance to do it again. Go and do it. Just wait for good weather as it takes away about 80% of the appeal. Now it was time to head to Auckland and see what would happen with my green face. Cannelle thought it would be fine to fly. I was not so sure, but hopeful. We had thought about leaving for Australia early as New Zealand was boring us on the North island but of course it was Easter and the flights were astronomically expensive. At least I had read that I could maybe get an emergency passport to get to Australia and apply for a new one there. This was not certain but at least if the airline said no, we wouldn't be stuck there. Lets see.
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