The Tongariro crossing and Kaikoura

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Hi again bloggers!!!

This is probably our best blog yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Tongariro Crossing:
This morning we woke up at 5:30AM!!!!!!! We drove past lake Taupo to get to the starting point of the Tongariro Crossing. There was this lovely lady there waiting for us, she gave us advice on coats, hats and food, (Mum and Dad had already sorted this!) then we got the bus to the actual start. And then we walked....and walked....and walked.....and walked....until we got to the first stopping point where we had breakfast. Marmite and chocolate spread sandwiches. We had people walking past us with eyes glued to our sandwiches.

After that we walked.... and walked....and walked.....and walked. Then we reached the first volcano Mt. Nangaroe. It was a perfect cartoon shaped volcano with steam coming out of the top - which with Mum being a mum got a bit nervous about. Then we reached a place called the South crater after a giant uphill climb. The south crater which used to be a volcano was easily a mile wide, it was like walking across a desert in the middle of it (except there was light brown mud, not sand).

After another giant climb we reached the Red Crator - which is a volcano, that blew itself up - so that now you can see the insides of it. In the middle was a 'dyke'. This is formed by the lava bubbling up from underneath the rock, which forms a hard crust of rock. The lava then drains away from the inside leaving the hard crust standing, the wind and rain then erode softer rock away, leaving the dyke (hard crust) sticking up. The colour of the rocks were bright blood red, or butterfly yellow and charcoal black. The red comes from iron in the lava rock, the yellow comes from sulphur and the black comes from different minerals and natural chemicals mixing together.

After the crators we went down the steepest hill I have ever been down in my life - even steeper than in the Himalayas - it was a t least a 45 degrees drop! Some people were going down at 3 centimetres at a time - meanwhile Dad Oliver and me just legged it down - it was meant to take you half an hour to get down and it took us 3 minutes! On the way down we saw the emerald lakes, which for the same reason as the red, yellow green lava rock - they were red, astonishing blue and bright green.

So then we walked and walked....and walked.....and walked, until finally we got the the 15km post and had a break. At 16kms we found it was actually quite early - sooooo, we had a chance of making the 4:00PM bus, rather than wait for the 5:30 bus!! and we made it, but after that me legs refused to walk anymore - and they were stiff for 2 days. But I walked every step of the 18kms. Yeah!

Oliver says:
When I got to the emerald lakes I thought finally we've finished...but we hadn't, I thought 'what - we're still walking.......'.
Before we just a huge volcano and little tiny people walking up it. (view from the top!). We had lunch then we went down this slope. The slope was just gravel, so we could just sledge down it. I walked the first 12kms myself with no help. The emerald lakes, were green, muddy red and dark blue, and light blue. The smoke came out of the floor, because we were standing on a volcano!!! The smoke smelled like gone off, burned, with stinky fish smell, gone off egg.

I couldn't move after the walk, and fell asleep on the bus. I couldn't move my legs for ages.


Whale watching in Kaikoura

Oliver says:
We saw loads!!!!! We saw sperm wales, and hundreds of dusky dolphins - They jumped out of the water and flipped. We saw some seals, they were very fat, and had some babies. We saw the tail of the sperm whale when it was diving down to eat squid.

There was one dolphin that was jumping out of the water, and leaning backwards, then flipping over. The boat was quite big and very fast. By the side of my window there were huge splashes.

Hannah again:
To get the ferry for the south Island we had to leave Taupo at 2:00AM (silly o'clock!). Mum and Dad split the driving between them, and we got ther at 7:00AM sadly early - meant we could have left at 3:00AM - just 2 more hours sleep!☺.

We were on the ferry for 3.5 hours. There was a cinema, playground, cafe, shop, video games a bar, food court. We didn't see any whales from the ferry. We landed in Picton, then drove straight to Kaikoura. Mum and Dad decided not to go to the west coast because of the rain. We decided to go to Kaikoura and go whale watching instead.

We booked for 3:30 on Friday, and were sitting on the cafe getting very excited (especially Mum - because it was very rough (she drives a lifeboat!), until someone said on the tanoy - “sorry 3:30 group - but your trip has been cancelled”. BUT we had double booked, just in case this happened. So we went out at 10:30 Saturday instead. I'm so glad we took that one instead as we saw 8 sperm whales, but this might include counting 2 of them twice as they were asleep and kept bobbing under the surface!

We got some snazzy pics of this lot. Plus we saw dusky dolphins which are the craziest, smallest, cutest, dolphins I have ever seens in my life. They kept doing somersaults, back flips, corkscrews and swimming on their noses. They would come right up to the boat, and do somersaults right in front of the boat - so close that you could touch them if you wanted to-and everyone would get splashed. We saw Fur Seals, when we got off the boat I wished we could go 1000 times again.

The sperm whales were so big, they have 2.5 tonnes of oil in their head, which is so pure and perfect that they use it for space shuttles. I think that this is as wrong as can be.

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