A night in the middle of nowhere

up on the ski fields
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After the exertions of Lake Taupo, we were promised a nice relaxing chilled out couple of days. From Taupo, heading south, we passed through Tongariro National Park on the way towards our base for the night.

Some of the guys went for a ski on Mt. Whakapapa - this is an active volcano - it's most rcent erruption only a few years ago. It's pronounced with an "F", instead of a "Wh". This provided a good source of amusement for a while. As we had promised ourselves that we would hit the slopes in Queenstown, we decided to take a fantastic walk through the national park with Dan and a few of the other guys.

Get some friends!!! She soon shut up after that.

Whakapapa ski field (thats pronounced "phu"...really).
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The scenery can only be described as stunning. Beautiful bushland, creeks and waterfalls - all beneath a bright blue sky. Not to mention the incredible sight of Whakapapa, and the imposing but beautiful Mount Ruapehu. Nerds among you apparantly know this as Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings. We spent a good couple of hours walking to a scenic spot beneath a waterfall where we had a lovely lunch before picking up the guys from their skiiing.

Our evening was to be spent in a lodge called River Valley. As you might expect, this was buried deep in a valley, right beside a river, in the middle of nowhere. It's really a lovely place, unfortunately we didnt get to spend more than about 12 hours there. We arrived in darkness, and only managed to see the lovely setting just before we left the following day!

Mount Doom - or Mount Ruapehu if you're a local and dont give two shits about Lord of the Rings
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We still made the best of it - we were fed a lovely meal of spuds, veggies, pasta and a surprisingly lovely Venison casserole. We are both converted to eating Bambi now.

The night was spet in the cosy comfort of River Valleys' bar and lounge area, playing drinking games and having some fun. The most fun being the hammer and nail game, which is more fun than you migth expect and not as dangerous as it sounds. This involves six nails being hammered into a block of wood with the thin edge of a hammer. Every time you miss your nail, you take a drink. Last nail down loses. Unfortunately, Ciara lost and had to down a shot of something supposed to be pretty disgusting, but being the hardened drinker she is, it turned out she'd had worse.

amazing mountain - warning: i may have got slightly carried away with the photos
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The lodge provided a load of activities such as horse trekking and white water rafting for us to enjoy. However, we were all a bit wrecked from our previous week or so doing non stop activities, topped off by the skydive. None of us opted for any of the activities, and chose a lie-in instead.

One guest at the lodge was highly unimpressed that we didnt fancy some white water rafting, and gave us a piece of her mind! She had been there waiting for 4 days to do it (there's a minimum of 4 people needed), and was more than a little upset to find us all broke and knackered. Get some friends!!! She soon shut up after that.

guess which one of us was cold
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The next morning we were ready to go by 9.30 and all there was time for was a few parting photos which you'll see on the pix page. All in all, a nice place, sorry we couldn't spend more time there, but it was a nice change of scenery after the couple of days in Taupo. We were looking forward to getting back to the big city after River Valley, as we headed on the long journey to Windy Wellington, which turned out not to be that windy at all really.