Hot Pools and Mount Doom

For our second day in Rotorua we rented a 7seater car with some of the other members of our bus tour who had hopped off and headed out to a geothermally active site called Wai-o-Tapu. It was very smelly, with all the sulphur and whatnot, but an amazing place. We wandered around bubbling hot pools of mud, steaming lakes and saw a geyser erupt. The geyser was least impressive however as it was artificially triggered at 10:15 every morning by a tour guide putting some soap powder in it. On the way back we stopped at a bee-ery and tasted some honey.

The next day we hopped back on the bus and headed to Taupo 80km south of Rotorua, on the way there we stopped for an hour at an amazing place where a hot river from a hot spring met a cold river. Here we bathed in the waters it was awesome, you could sit close to the hot river for a nice toasty bathe, or there was a ledge at the meeting point where you could sit and the hot water warmed your front and the cold water cooled your back. After we had had a nice soak we continued to taupo, the group on this bus were/are a really good laugh and that evening we all went out to a pub quiz.

The next morning we were up at 6:30am to go to the tongariro national park and walk the tongariro crossing, voted NZ's best one day walk. It was epic, and a 2hr detour from our supposedly already 7hr walk would allow us to walk up mount doom! So despite the woman guide telling us not to do it as we didnt have time, we went for it. It was a hard climb though, mainly because we went straight up, in a straight line. The views from the top were amazing, stretching out over the entire national park. The way back down we used the soft crumbly ash to pretty much straight line it and got down in about 10 minutes. The rest of the walk was spectacular and we completed it all in 6 and a half hours with plenty of lunch and photo stops. We were shuttled back to our alpine lodge hostel, and the first port of call was its spa pool, where we soaked our aching limbs for a good 40minutes. That evening we watched Lord of the rings to see our conquested peak in all its cinematic glory, although I only lasted 1hr before retiring to bed.

And so that was our final day on the stray bus, it took us to wellington yesterday, the final stop on our journey and where I am now. Tomorrow we head to the south island and go it alone in a camper. Blog Soon

Rich