mount doom and a skydive

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Lake Taupo is the biggest lake in NZ and Taupo is the town nestling on its shores. The hostel i was staying in was full of triathletes in town for the national triathalon.

About 5.30 the morning after arriving i caught a bus with lots of other non triathletes for the journey to start a trek called The Tongariro Crossing. The scenery as we arrived was stunning with low mists hanging over the distant valleys and lakes. We turned the other way to start the day walk accross the volcanic landscape with a sidetrip that took us up Mount Doom, previously known as Mt. Ngauruhoe. Unusually i had a trekking buddy, however on this trek you would never be lonely as hordes of people had descended from the buses to form a train snaking up The Devil's Staircase, which was the first climb. We reached Mt. Doom and decided that we had enough time for the climb and it would give us an opportunity to escape the ant trail of people. The climb was fairly arduous, because on volcanic ash its often a case of 2 steps forward 1 step back. With some effort we made it through the encircling clouds to the top where we could see inside the active crater, but little else. The descent was fun sliding and jumping down through the ash.

...i told him to straighten up or i'd chunder in his face

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The rest of the walk was through scenery of striking rock formations with vividly contrasting colours due to the mineral composition. We had lunch on the edge of another larger crater walled with jet black and red ash. The ash made for comfortable heated seats. On the descent were levels of thermal pools. The final part of what had been a long walk was through forest which seemed almost tropical because of the dampness. In the end i was glad to get back on the bus to Taupo, where we drove slowly past the triathletes grimly going about their run... which made me feel better.

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Day 2 in Taupo was all about a skydive. Having unsuccessfully tried twice to go in Argentina it didn't look like thrid time lucky as i woke up to grey windy weather. However, i was lucky and the weather soon cleared. I opted for the big jump from 15,000 feet. I didn't realise how high this was until i was staring down at the ground from said height. For me the moment before the jump was sh#t scary - i was suspended in mid air as my instructor hung onto the edge of the plane. As we fell clear the fear was replaced by disbelieving euphoria. We did quite a bit of spinning and hand shape throwing in the 60 second freefall. The parachaute pull came with a jolt and a little discomfort in the harness region (have a guess where) and my instructor seemed to want to totally disorient me with a swirling descent, i told him to straighten up or i'd chunder in his face. We came down through some low cloud which gave a good impression of the height and the landing was easy. Quite simply it was the most fun i've had in 60 seconds (the freefall) and i'm going to make everyone watch the dvd.

And apart from one more night back in Auckland that was about it for NZ.