Cheers New Zealand

3/1/16
From Wellington, we drove north to Taupo. It was a bit cloudy and windy when we arrived, so heading to the natural hot spring pools sounded amazing. We went to these pools when we came to Taupo as we were traveling south, but they were so amazing that we wanted to go back. Relaxing in the pools is just what our tired and sore bodies needed.

   

 3/2/16

Another long day of travel to Auckland was ahead of us, but a couple stops along the way made it more enjoyable. A stop to see some of the bubbling mud pools as we approached Rotorua was pretty cool.    

After dropping riders off in Rotorua, we stopped at Rainbow Springs kiwi encounters to see how the kiwi population is being sustained through their efforts. We got to see several kiwi in the nocturnal exhibits! It was so cute to see them running around. They are sensitive to light so I wasn’t able to get any pictures.

 
When we finally arrived in Auckland, we got off our kiwi experience bus for the last time. We hadn’t done any souvenir shopping yet, so we decided to spend the afternoon shopping and got everything we wanted!  
3/3/16
After spending our last night in New Zealand, we woke up not ready to leave New Zealand. We checked out of our hostel and headed to a park to enjoy the New Zealand sunshine for a few more hours.   

It came time to head to the airport, and the long trek home began. From Auckland to Tahiti to LA, and getting our Pheonix flight delayed. To meeting Jared Allen, chatting for a while, getting his autograph and being on the same flight to Pheonix with him. To missing our connecting flight to Minneapolis, getting out up in a hotel for the night and free meals. 

One more flight to home sweet home. It has been one adventure of a lifetime!

Lots of Water: Beaches, Hot Spas, Waterfalls, Rapids

 1/31/16

What was supposed to be our lazy day to recover from our hike, turned into a pretty active day of over 10 miles of walking. We wanted to chill at the beach, but before that we needed to check into a different hostel that we had booked. By the time we actually got to the beach, which was farther than we expected from our hostel, we had done a lot of walking. When we got there it was very relaxing though. 
We saw some black swans that we got pretty close to. Nate pretended he had food and they inched closer. You could tell they were pissed off when they realized he didn’t have anything.   

It also ended up being a pretty big day in Taupo, it was packed because there was a high speed boat race on the lake. Definitely some cool free entertainment!

   

More walking occurred when we were hungry for lunch, and when we wanted to go back to our hostel, and when when we wanted to venture out to the natural hot spas. We headed out to these hot springs at around sundown and when we got there it was pretty dark. The first pool we tried was way to hot for us. We went down to where the hot water springs met the river and it was amazing. You could find a temperature that was right for you because the cold river water was mixing with the hot springs. It was pretty amazing that if you laid down, half of your body could be in cold water and half could be in hot water. So relaxing and it felt great on our sore muscles. It was around 11 when we left and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet so we were pretty hungry. We ended up walking a pretty long ways to the McDonald’s in Taupo since most restaurants were closed by then.

It was a fun day, but not the lazy day we had planned on.
2/1/16

We departed from lovely Lake Taupo in the morning to head for River Valley. On the way we took a scenic drive through Tongariro National Park where awesome our driver Rob told us a cool Maori story about how the volcanos formed. Basically there was a war between the guy volcanos over the one girl volcano. In the National Park, we took some hikes to two beautiful waterfalls: Taranaki Falls and Tawhai Falls.

        
 
   
 As we started getting closer to the adventure lodge in River Valley, we lost phone service and the road started to get very narrow and twisty and turny. I don’t usually get car sick, but I had to try to keep my eyes on the road the best I could from the middle of the bus to keep from hurling. As soon as we arrived, I collapsed on one of the couches to let my tummy recover. 

Before dinner, we took a dip in the river by jumping off a little trolley that is used to get across the river, or for many to get in perfect position to jump into the river. It was a bit chilly but so refreshing!   
 We ate dinner family style at the lodge. The roast chicken dinner they made for us was delicious! After a good time chatting with other guests, relaxing by the river, and playing a game of cribbage, we joined the crowd watching the table challenge. The lodge has a long wooden table and they move the benches and challenge guests to start on the top of the table and to go under and back up on top without touching the legs of the table or the floor. Many tried and many failed and no girl has ever done it because you need a certain arm span to reach around the table. Nate decided to give it a go, and was one of the two people to do it that night. It was awesome and he got a giant round of applause. 
 2/2/16

We woke up early because it was time to white water raft in some of the best rapids in New Zealand and with the most respected guides in the country. I was a bit nervous for my first time rafting and the river has many grade 3-5 rapids and is very technical. Once we were on the river, I felt very safe and trusted my guide Ants because I could tell he really knew what he was doing. By the time we hit rapids, he had taught us everything we needed to do safety wise and technically to make it through the rapids. While many people in other rafts fell over board and other rafts tipped, our raft rocked the rapids without any INTENTIONAL flips and Nate and I had an amazing time.   

   
   
Once again, the drive out of river valley was brutal with the hour of twisty roads and it was miserable from the back of the bus. The rest of the day was a long 4 hour drive to Wellington. After arriving around 6:30, we had dinner and a relaxing evening at our hostel!

Breath Taking Views

1/29/16

Before leaving Rotorua, we stopped for brekkie where Nate managed to feed a bird out of his hand that flew to our table!

Kiwi Experience picked us up and we stopped at Te Puia where we got a great discount for a guided tour. Te Puia is a cultural and geothermal area with the largest geyser in the Southern Hemisphere. On our tour, we learned more about the Maori culture and toured the weaving and carving schools there. The carving in the picture will be a World War II memorial and is scheduled to be finished this spring.

The geothermal site was also awesome! Our tour guide boiled us some eggs in one of the pools; so yummy! The bubbling mud pools, the crystal pools and of course the geyser were all fascinating!  
   

   

     We also got a chance to see a live Kiwi bird, New Zealand’s national bird. Kiwi birds are very rare and are nocturnal, so the best chance to get your eyes on one is in captivity. I didn’t get a picture of the live ones we saw because we walked into a dark room to see them and were not allowed to disturb them by taking pictures.

 Near Lake Taupo, we stopped to check out Haka Falls, the only outlet of Lake Taupo which is the largest lake in Australasia. While this isn’t a very tall waterfall, about 9 meters, it is impressive because of the volume of water that tumbles over these falls. 200,000 liters of water flow over these falls every SECOND. That’s a lot of water! 
  
Once arriving in Taupo, we checked into our hostel and went grocery shopping to get food for our all day hike the following day. By 5:30, we were by the marina, all ready for our sailing evening. We had pizza on the boat, and sailed onto beautiful lake Taupo. Good thing we brought rain jackets because just as we left it started raining, but it didn’t last long. 

   
   
 We sailed along the coast to the famous Maori carving, so beautiful. Then we anchored and it was swimming time! 

  

The ride back was a bit chilly with the wind and being wet, but it was a beautiful evening.

 
1/30/16

Today was our all day hike, and it was a very early morning. We got up at 4:30 am to get ready, finish packing our day bags, and to eat some breakfast. Our Tongariro Expeditions transportation arrived at 5:30 am to drive us an hour and a half to the start of the hike in Tongariro National park, the 4th oldest National Park in the world. The Tongariro Alpine crossings, without the extra summit hikes, is 19.4 km. Our driver told us about the two optional summit hikes, one was to the active volcano Mt Ngauruhoe (otherwise known as Mount Doom), and the other was to Mt Tongariro. We only would have time to go to one summit, and since the Mount doom hike is a very dangerous ascent and descent with no marked path, we decided to decide on the spot if we were going to do Mount Doom.

We started our hike at 7 am as the morning clouds started to burn off. The beginning of the hike was fairly flat, but after about an hour we got to Devil’s staircase (an hour ascent of mostly stairs). To us, it didn’t really seem like a Devil’s staircase; we were expecting worse.

   
 Now was the time to decide on if we were going to hike up Mt. Doom whose summit stands 2,291 meters tall. We saw a girl walk towards the volcano in jeans and a one shoulder bag and thought, if she can do it, we can do it! The beginning was easier than we expected, but it quickly turned into one of the most difficult hikes that I can imagine. Sand and rocks covered the mountain side and every step forward turned into a sliding step back. It was exhausting and at some points we were on all fours basically crawling up the mountain. There weren’t any marked paths so people were creating their own, depending on what way they thought would be the easiest. There were some solid lava flows that were easier to climb, so we made our way to them whenever we could. 
   
 When we made it to the top, it was windy and we were in a cloud so it was a bit cold. We ate our lunch by the crater of the volcano, and we each threw a rock in (we should have bought some cheap rings to throw in). We couldn’t see to the bottom of the crater which was a bummer, but it being in a cloud made it kind of eery which was cool. 

   
 We waited a bit for the clouds to clear, but they didn’t so we started our descent. While it was less exhausting, it was more difficult and took strategy. Every step forward turned into sliding 3 steps forward. Large rocks became loose and every now and then people were yelling “ROCK!!” down the mountain to warn others. 
 

  
 We eventually made it down, and a few scraps, a pair of socks, and multiple stops to empty out our shoes, we had successfully climbed Mount Ngauruhoe! It was exhilarating and very difficult but so worth it! 

We were not near the end by any means and had more than half of the crossing left to go. More tough ascents and descents, but some of the most incredible views. Completely breath taking sights that I couldn’t believing existed. 

  
Vibrant colors on Red Crater. 

  
Shimmering pools at the Emerald Lakes and Blue Lake. 

   
 
   
 Mountains as far as the eye could see. 

 Many snacks, 3 liters of water, 2 liters of Gatorade, and many applications of sunscreen later, we made it. So fulfilling! 18.6 miles of some of the most difficult hiking, with the most breath taking views. 

  
  As you can imagine, we didn’t do much the rest of the night. We showered, and went to dinner where we watched some rugby, followed by a relaxing night and then some much needed sleep after an ending total of 20.33 miles for the day!