New Zealand - Tongariro Alpine Crossing

After one night in Wellington, we made our way to Tongariro National Park. This was the place where we were going to do our biggest hike yet, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It's a 19.4km hike that takes you up and over a volcano range and then down into the beautiful valley that overlooks Lake Taupo. We were especially excited for it because the mountain we'd be hiking past was Mt. Ngauruhoe...also known to Lord of the Rings fans as Mt. Doom!! The morning of our hike, we woke up really early, as we were catching a 5:45am shuttle from our hostel to the beginning of the walk. Since the walk is one way, you have to arrange shuttle transport to get you to the start and then pick you up again.

The walk started out with a fairly flat bit until Soda Spring, when it started to climb steeply. It was a quite hard walk at times. We made it to Red Crater (half way point) at 9:00am. We took lots of picture of Mt. Doom, the Red Crater, and the Emerald Lakes and then made our way down towards Blue Lake. We stopped on a rock to eat our sandwiches and have a bit of a break and then continued on. The last half of the walk was mostly downhill, which was nice at first, but started to hurt our legs and knees towards the end! We had amazing views of Lake Taupo as we made our way into the valley. We hiked pretty hard the last part so we could make the 12:30pm shuttle back to the hostel. The last few kilometers seemed to go on forever! But, we made it back in time for the 12:30pm shuttle!!

Once we made it back to the hostel, we had some well deserved showers and a really long nap. Then woke up to make some dinner and fall back asleep afterwards! It was an amazing, but difficult hike, and we were hurting for a couple days after!

Fun in the sun, followed by pain and dizziness

Chris here,

After we made our 'that's not a knife, THIS, THIS is a KNIFE' knives, we headed up to the Nelsen region of New Zealand. This is in the middle of the northernmost part of the south island, is smack dab in the middle of wine country, and is right beside the beautiful Abel Tasman National Park. Now, you should know that basically the entire south island is a National Park and that it's pretty much all beautiful, but still, it should be mentioned. We were pretty busy over the past few days, so we decided to have a lazy day in Nelsen and then maybe kayak the Abel Tasman coast the next day. We stayed at this sweet as hostel called The Bug, which is definitely one of the best hostels in the country, run by a cool, laid back guy and his family. It's called the bug because everything is VW Beetle themed. Our room was the Lady Bug. Lazy day began with yummy breakfast and a walk up to the 'peak' of Nelsen, where you can see over the entire town. Another great day in NZ, temperatures around 30 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We sat down and looked over the city, but actually preferred to turn around and look back over the rolling hills and countryside.

Kayaking was probably going to be too time intensive and rushed, so we decided to walk the coastline instead. We took a water taxi from Marahau up to Anchorage Bay, where we saw the famous 'split apple rock' and several amazing beaches. On our walk back we promised ourselves we would hit up a couple of them. Anchorage Bay was great, but better beaches beckoned us, so we hiked up the hills and were on our way. Another 30 degree day, which is kinda too hot to be walking uphill in, so we plunked ourselves down on this little beach and lazed in the sun and swam in the calm bay. It's definitely nice to not have to worry about sharks, jellyfish, or rip tides like you do in Australia. But what you do have to worry about is rocks. Andrea smashed her foot up good on one and she was bleeding everywhere. Good thing we weren't in Australia or there surely would have been several Great Whites swimming right for us. lol.

When we got her back to the beach and bandaged up, it was obvious she was cut pretty bad, but we still had 2 hours to hike, and since Andrea's a trooper and an Army Ranger all in one, she laced up those Keen brand hikers like the keener she is and we marched on out of there. Great scenery, great walk, but the cut on Andrea's foot is not a highlight.

From there we drove to Picton for the night, where we'd catch the ferry the next morning to go to Wellington, but our GPS now has an apetite for the craziest and most off-the-beaten-track paths you can imagine. So many twists and turns up and down hills and mountains that I never had the car straight for longer than half a second the entire trip. Very beautiful (thanks, GPS) but after a long day I just wanted to GET THERE ALREADY! We'll have to keen an eye on that thing...