January 2008

Since New Years, and changing the van, we spent a while in Auckland doing up the interior, but we did manage to fit in a few fun things like going roller blading in Mission Bay – I didn’t fall! Once the Homy was ready to rock we went back down to Taupo.

One evening Sean, Jeanine and I walked up Mount Tauhara which is quite near Taupo and gave us great views of the lake and town. That was a warm up for the Tongariro Crossing, a popular walk through Tongariro National Park. The walk first climbs up to the base of Mount Ngaurahoe, which was Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. We were tempted to go up Ngaurahoe until it got hidden in the clouds – as there is no track up it (and it’s quite a steep climb) people are advised not to do it unless there’s very good visibility. So we continued along the track through a remarkably flat basin before climbing again to the Red Crater. From there we decided to go up the side track to the top of Mount Tongariro, a round trip that is supposed to take a few hours but only took us one. Carrying on down the path we passed the Emerald lakes and some great scenery before arriving at the end just 6 hours 20 minutes after leaving the start. We only walked for about 5 hours 30 minutes in all on the track too, despite the guidelines suggesting what we walked should take over 10 hours! Sean was on a mission to complete the walk as soon as possible! It is a very good walk through some amazingly barren scenery.

Our new bikes arrived while we were in Taupo so we set off with Tim and some others one evening to go biking. With a little confusion about how far away the track was, we finally arrived at Ikawhenua Range two hours and 120 km later. It was getting dark but we hadn’t driven all that way to not go biking, so out came the bikes, and the two torches that we had between seven of us… It was good fun though, trying to keep on the track in the dark! Another day Sean and I took a spin in Taupo on the track between Spa Park and Huka Falls, which was a great easy run. Sean has to be patient with me, a beginner biker!