Climbing the tongariro alpine crossing

So yesteday we woke up extra early (5am) to get to the Tongariro alpine crossing (for you Lord of the rings fans, it's mount doom in the films... Or so I've been told). It is a 19.4km hike up and down a mountain. The peak that we hit was 1886m and it was calculated at about 40, 000 steps.

I made sure to bring enough food and water for the trek and actually packed way too much. I kept offering it to the people I was climbing with because I was hoping to lighten my bag. This was actually really good because they didn't bring enough food. They repeated that chief steeeeeeeeeeve takes care of his women and that made me laugh on several occasions. I kept with a pretty big group of people because they had a really good pace and they pointed out several amazing picture spots. The trek ended up being about 7 hours and was beautiful. It has been the highlight of my trip so far but that doesn't mean much since I have been thinking that every day.

Today was a relaxing day so ill include it here too. We got up and then drove down to Wellington. We stopped a couple of times, once to do a rubber boot throwing contest at a small town that is known for it called Taihape. We split the group into the girls and boys and our group leader said he would buy a drink for the winners, and I won! Yay!!!!! I tried throwing the boot like a baseball and it worked pretty well. Just checked into the hostel for the night, tomorrow we will lose about 6 people as we head off to the south Island but we gain 5. So it will be a bitter sweet night. Anyways, I'm glad that I caught up to real time. Hopefully i will be able to keep up from now on.Read more