Early anniversary celebrations

Tomorrow is our 5 year anniversary! We've booked a shuttle to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing tomorrow to celebrate. Because we're doing such a big hike tomorrow we decided to go out for a fancy meal tonight while we had the energy to do so. We found a nice restaurant in Taupo and luckily managed to get a reservation for 5pm. We both chose the pork belly and boy oh boy was it amazing. It looked like hardly any food but it was so filling and satisfying. We shared a ginger cake desert after which was just as exquisite and were thoroughly pleased with our choice of restaurant in the end. Afterwards we had a walk along the lakeside to let the food go down. Before the meal we'd spent the day going to Turangi, a town in the opposite direction to Taupo. We visited the i-site to clarify some things for tomorrow's walk before heading into the Volcanic centre they had there too. It was a place Nick wanted to visit last time we were in the region but it wasn't until we had gone north near Rotorua to where Google said it was that we discover that it had in fact moved down to Turangi. It's always therefore been on the list of places to visit during this second lot of travelling. It was a very informative and interesting centre which gave you so much insight into how the landscape around us had formed. Although it was small we spent almost 2 hours in there absorbing all the information. Afterwards we sat and ate lunch on a bench before checking out the local charity shop. We'd read online that the weather on the hike we are doing can change dramatically very quickly so we wanted to see if we could find any gloves. Unfortunately it's the wrong time of year for gloves it seems so we have decided to take some extra socks to put on our hands if needs be. It was so hot today that we had planned to head back to the cabin, get changed and go for a swim in the lake, however when we found out we could only book a table for 5pm we only had time to shower and get changed before heading out. I guess that's not such a bad thing when we have such a early start tomorrow for the big hike. Fingers crossed we haven't overestimated our fitness!Read more