All work and no play!!!

Tongariro Crossing

As I had mentioned in the last blog entry I was going to go on a hike ( or tramp as Kiwi's call them) through a place called the Tongariro Crossing which people will remember as 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the rings. On the 15 of Feb me and Mike a Canadian guy traveling with us both went on the tramp (the girls decided to go horse riding, wimps!). The views were stunning but the walk was very hard walk. The normal walk alone is 17km and as an option you can have a go at climbing the mountain which adds an extra 3 hours to the walk. We couldn't go all the way and not have a go so we ended up spending hours at some points literally crawling on our hands and knees up Ngauruhoe Mountain (mount doom). The mountains stood at over 2300m above sea level and from the base its a 1km climb upwards and very very steep, there is also no path to climb you have to make your own way, which we did by picking the worst path up the mountain and forgetting to read the advice in the leaflet we were given about taking the easiest route!! After what seemed like hours of climbing we got to the top and the view was stunning you could see for miles over other mountain ranges and forests, then some cloud came in the you couldn't even see the base of the mountain which worried us as at some point we did want to go back down!

The mountain is actually a dormant volcano the man of the bus said that if you hear any rumbles your in trouble, the last time it actually erupted was only in 1975, and you could see steam coming off some openings on the sides of the mountain, there was also a huge crater at the top that we didn’t expect to see, it was a lucky we didn’t have enough energy to run when we were nearly at the peak, otherwise we would have been straight down it! Had lunch on top of a volcano which was pretty cool and though it took over 3 hours to climb it took literally about 15 minutes to go down, often slipping over on my arse. Already feeling pretty tired we still had a 15km trek over smaller mountains, past volcanic lakes and through a forest which took another 5 half hours! By the end of the day I was pretty damn tired, smelly and dirty, however got some great pics and it was well worth it even though it was such hard work.

Finally doing some work!

After over 2 half months of traveling round and doing no work and being a lazy bum I have finally started to do some work to earn money. At the moment I am in the town of Napier in New Zealand and have just finished my first week fruit picking and guess what......its bloody hard work. You get paid by how many bins of fruit you pick (The bins are huge!!) and we have to be up by 6am, but you get to eat as many apples as you want though.... oooooo (Ill kill myself if I see another damn apple)!!! I suppose I don’t deserve any sympathy though as all you guys back home have had to put up with cold winter weather and doing 5 day weeks :-P!

Kim and I have gone separate ways for the next couple of weeks; she has headed back up to Auckland to work while I have stayed down here. There are quite a few of us fruit picking and we are all staying at the same Hostel so we have had quite a laugh and have hit the weekends pretty hard! Napier is quite a funny little down it’s got far too many old people though it’s quite funky to look at. In 1931 the entire city was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake and everything was rebuilt in an art deco style, it was art deco week the other week so everyone in the town dressed up in 30's style clothing, driving old cars and old planes do flybys over the town, it’s very strange to see. The guys at the hostel are a laugh and I’ve managed to make myself quite at home, slobbing out in front of the TV a lot (like being at home!).There is Keith from Scotland who is ex-army and likes a good drink, Kenny from Scotland who when drinks you cant understand what he’s saying, and he’s pretty much drinking 24/7, also there is Matt who has just recently come out of a 6 month stint in a Cambodian Jail after being taken in for questioning for a crime he didn’t commit (so he says!!), so its quite a rag tag bunch of guys but everyone has a laugh. We spend most our weekend’s playing cards and having shots then going out down the local bars and clubs in the week we are too tired from work to do anything! I’ve also watched a serious amount of television, they have just started to show little Britain over here, apart from that the TV is not all that good and there are adverts every 8 minutes! Kim has the digital camera so I can’t really take pictures at the moment not that these next few weeks will be very eventful. I’m also cooking for myself, Kim will be glad to know that I’ve not got scurvy yet!!

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