Still oop north

After New Year's we went back down to Rotorua to meet up with Ben & Coleanne once more. We had planned to do the Tongariro Crossing together, one of the most famous one day hikes (or 'tramps' as they call them here) in NZ. It is an estimated 7-8 hours of walking and crosses a series of volcanoes, incidentally used as the location for Mordor in the Lord of the Rings. We parked one of our cars at the end point, drove the other to the start and, armed with the one ring to rule them all, oh, sorry, I meant our lunch and plenty of water, we set out to hike our socks off.

I'll be honest, I thought I was fairly fit, but it seems age has certainly taken its toll on me. The first half of the walk is all uphill, and I wasn't doing too badly here at all. The weather was perfect, sun with a smattering of cloud giving excellent visibility across the whole region, nice cool breeze blowing, and although we all had to take the occasional breather, we were alright. When we had almost completed the ascent, we were given the option to climb up to the mouth of a volcano, which would have added a couple of hours on to the walk and looked practically vertical so we thought sod that and carried on. Just as we got past the summit and saw down the other side I literally gasped as i glimpsed the incredible colour of the Emerald Lakes. Our descent began and I thought it was all going to be a piece of cake from here - how wrong I was. I've had a dodgy left knee for a while now, maybe a couple of years, and whilst I've noticed that if I kneel or squat it stiffens up when I get back up again, I hadn't really paid it too much attention. Trying to walk down the pretty steep side of a mountain however took its toll and while Ben & Coleanne raced ahead, Isaac - gawd bless 'im - remained with me getting ever slower. There were big steps down on the path, a couple of feet deep each, placed every hundred feet or so, which after a while I just couldn't get down. Isaac had to either hold my hand as I stepped or literally pick me up and lift me down. I was getting exhausted and at one point I thought I saw the car park which was our end goal. When I realised that I was imagining it I thought 'Oh blimey, I'm not in a good way if I'm seeing mirages'. In fact when eventually Isaac called from up ahead to say 'We're here!' and I could barely bring myself to believe him. We collapsed into the car where Ben & Coleanne were waiting for us and realised that we'd done the walk in 6hrs 15m, despite my stupid knee, which was pretty good we reckoned. Although we had brought stuff to make dinner we just couldn't be bothered to cook so we went to the campsite restaurant. Ben barely made it through dinner before he crashed at 8.30pm; we blamed sunstroke as he was red as a tomato.

The next morning Ben & Coleanne headed back to Rotorua while we went on to Napier, which was destroyed in the 30s by an earthquake and was therefore rebuilt all in the Art Deco style. We pinpointed a campsite that said it was brand new and had free internet - virtually unheard of over here - so we headed there even though it was a bit out of the way. It took a while to find it, but we kept going past another campsite on the same road, so we called them and they said that that WAS the campsite, that there'd been a misprint in the book. We pulled in to find a tiny and wholey univiting place that looked more like a cramped car park than a campsite. The 'office' was a caravan on site with some unsavoury looking people sat on deckchairs out front. We paid our $20 and asked about the internet - oh no, it wasn't free, another misprint, it was $1 per 15 mins. If you could get it that is. It actually belonged to the backpackers next door. I checked and it was actually $2 per 15 mins and when I tried to get it from the van there was no chance. "I'm not staying here" I told Isaac, and went to get our money back. "Well, that's not really how it's done," she told me "I'll get in to trouble if I give you your money back". "I've only been here for 5 mins" I said firmly "and I'll have that $20 back please." She relented and we raced off with relief.

After a night spent at a decent enough campsite in town we headed into Napier but given that we had to get down to Wellington that evening we didn't spend much time there. We were back on the road in no time and taking the winding Highway 2 down to Windy Welly.

One of the girls I trained with, Sally, lives in Wellington and she very kindly offered to lend us her flat for the few days we were there, going off to stay with her boyfriend. She even lent us her car! We felt like proper people again *sigh*. We went out for dinner with Sally & Tom the first evening - Isaac was turned away from the bar we went to for not presenting valid ID haha* - and the following evening Isaac took me to my first strip club, Mermaids. They have a big tank the girls dive into! I thought it was great.

We visited Wellington Zoo, which was excellent. They had a sun bear, which I'd never seen or heard of before, which was a funny looking thing. We wandered around eating ice creams (of course) and we while we were looking at the chimps, a keeper came over to stand next to us with a dingo on a harness. They were still young, only around 5 months old, and were being acclimatised to the zoo**. The chimps went mad and started screaming at the sight of the dingo; one of them ran to the front, pulled up a big clump of earth and hurled it at us! We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and Isaac says he knows what he wants his next pet to be now: a red panda. I've pointed out it's probably illegal but he's determined.

The next evening Sally came round with a friend and asked if we wanted to come with them to visit some other friends of theirs. Only when we got there did it click that everyone there was either gay or a lesbian - I took Isaac aside to mention it to him, just in case he hadn't realised, as it's not really the kind of crowd he's used to back home! Still, he soon settled into it and within a few beers he was nattering away - it was a bit of an education I think. The following evening we went with Sally & Tom to a BBQ at another friend's and found ourselves surrounded by semi-famous musicians and the director of the fabulous Kiwi film Eagle Vs. Shark. I told him I loved the film and he seemed genuinely touched.

All too soon we had to leave Wellington at the crack of dawn to take the ferry over to Picton on the South Island...

*it was perfectly valid, just Canadian. They seem to think that you should bring your passport with you everywhere over here unless you have a NZ driving licence. Even though Isaac had two pieces of photo ID with his date of birth showing he was 19 and several other pieces of ID, including his birth certificate, to prove it was him, the manageress threw a Parkie on us and ordered him out.
**Hello Lorenzo! Hello Lorenzo! (I don't expect anyone but my sisters to get this comment)