 | | Apr. 27th, 2006 @ 10:53 pm Mordor and volcanoes |
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Hellu!
Last Thursday me and Jeanette got up early in the morning, and took the bus to Taupo, by the biggest lake in New Zealand, Lake Taupo. The bus took about 5 hours, and I could finally have a look at the green New Zealand landscape. Beautiful.
We arrived Taupo around noon, and after checking in and leaving all our luggage at the "Rainbow Lodge", we went for a walk up by the Waikato river. We walked by Taupo Bungy, where Jeanette's friend Maria jumped a couple a weeks ago. It was a long way down... By the river, we passed a smaller river running out into the Waikato river. This was a hot river, and there was lots of people taking a bath in it. (Taupo is situated in the most active volcanic area in New Zealand, so there is a lot of those kind of hot streams around).
Further up (or down?) the river, we came to Huka Falls, where we together with lots others had to stop and take some pictures. We continued our walk up to "Craters of the moon" and had a look at that strange volcanic area, with lots of hot steams and boiling mud. Quite fascinating, and quite smelly because of the sulphur in the steams.
We soon realized that we would not be able to get back to Taupo before it became dark. We didn't feel like walking around in the dark all by ourselves, so we were relieved when some other youths asked us if we wanted a ride back to Taupo.
Back at the "Rainbow Lodge" we were too tired to do anything, so we just went straight to bed after dinner. Had to get up at 05:40 in the morning to catch the "Tongariro Expeditions"-bus to the Tongariro National Park. The mission of the day was to do the "Tongariro Crossing", straight through the area where they filmed the scenes for "Mordor" in the making of Peter Jacksons "The Lord of the Rings". Of course Jenny had to take a little look at the top of the volcano Mt. Ngauruhoe as well. (Also known as Mount Doom from the previous mentioned film). Leaving Jeanette with her camera all by herself, I found a guy from Israel (Amir) to climb with. The whole volcano is covered in sand and small lava stones, so it feels like wading all the way to the top. It was exhausting. Fortunately we found a lava stream to follow, allowing us to climb along some bigger rocks, which made the climb a lot easier.
It was a bit foggy this day, but when we got to the summit of Mt. Ngauruhoe, we were above the clouds and fog, and got a spectacular view. We could see Mt. Ruapehu, and all the way to Mt. Taranaki (Mt. Egmont).
Absolutely worth the effort of the climb. I can report that there was no smoke coming from the crater. (The bus driver informed us that this volcano used to erupt approximately every ninth year, and that it hasn't erupted since 1975. :P) There was a hot steam up there, though.
I was not looking forward to the descent since the climb up had been relatively difficult, but the return from the summit was the most fun part. We could just slide all the way down on our heels, in deep sand and small rocks. Great fun! :D
We finished the rest of the Tongariro Crossing pretty quickly. It was an easy walk, passing the "Red Crater", the "Emerald Lakes" and the "Blue lake". The landscape up there is of another world. I can easily understand why they chose this area for filming "Mordor".
Me and Jeanette arrived at the car park on the other side almost at the same time. We took the bus back to the "Rainbow Lodge", and had no more energy to do anything else but to eat dinner and go to bed and get some sleep.
On saturday morning we rented some really horrible bikes, and took a ride around in the Taupo area. We had a wonderful ride through the woods, along small tracks by the river, and ended up by something called the "Honey Hive". Here you could taste different kinds of honey, and learn a bit about bees.
We spent 5 or 6 hours on those bikes, and were pretty fed up by them when we returned them around 6 o'clock in the evening. With sore butts and tired leg muscles, we spent the night solving sudoku and talking to others staying in the lodge. Jeanette also played a bit on the piano. She's multi-talented, that girl! :D
We were leaving on sunday, and planned to walk a bit about in the center of Taupo before taking the bus back to Auckland, but it was raining a bit too much, so we just stayed in the lodge and wrote a couple of letters and post cards instead.
And we all agreed that it had been a nice weekend. :)
The pictures are already in my gallery. (http://folk.ntnu.no/jennyme/gallery/Taupo)
Back in Auckland I've been working on the 340 project every day this week. The Easter break is over on Friday, so on Monday I'll be back at the uni doing other papers as well. Wonder how I'm going to get time to do everything. Right now it feels like I could work solely on the 340-thing, and still have more than enough to do. I've decided to drop one of my papers. I haven't got enough time to do the assignments for it, so it's no use wasting the time.
I have to go to bed now, but I'll write more some other day. :)
Real soon now! [tm] |
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