The day i conquered Mt Doom, and failed to conquer the trout...

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We arrived in Taupo and it was baking. Like ridiculously hot! like the kinda heat where you go, "you know what, its hot!".

It seemed to me like a rather spiffing idea to go fishing. Taupo, a lake which could fit Singapore in it with room to spare and boasts a trout population in excess of 1,000,000, thats a million! I rented a rod, got a license and hit the river. I fished my way down to the river until i got to the lake and fished from a pier for a time but then lost my last spinner. Incidentally if someone catches a fish in Lake Taupo with a spinner in its mouth, its mine, can i have it back?

I cooked us up a massive pasta bake that night, to last us two days and give us enough energy for the next day and then after a game of pool we hit the sack early.

The next morning i woke at 5am, showered, breakfasted, followed my usual routine and then woke Rob at 6 in time to catch the 6.20 bus to Tongariro National Park.

We were going to conquer the Tongariro National Park, the set of Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings. It was going to be a hot one! The kinda heat where you go "Shit, its gonna be a very bloody hot today. Jesus Andrew look at your sweatpatches..." You got it!

We covered some fairly flat ground to start with, through what looked like a barren wasteland where the very fumes you breath is posion...you get the idea. It started off green and gradually became yellow, then black and brown. It started off flat too, that was until we began to make the ascent up teh devils staircase. That was bloody difficult. It was also the point when i realised how unfit i had become in the last two months of non exercise and vowed to buy some trainers and quite literally get my arse in gear. But still we climbed it and afterwards i was sweating somewhat, but boy was it worth it.

The top of the staircase opened up to a vast crater, completely flat for about a kilometre. It was yellow and like a desert. It felt like we had entered the set of a John Wayne movie! At the end of this wee crater was another steep scramble, to one side the rock dropped away into this crater, on the other side the world dropped away!

At the top of this we had the option to carry on, or climb another mountain. You live once. We climbed the next mountain, where alot of Mt Doom was filmed. It was bloody hard work, but it was worth it when we reached the summit at 2000 odd metres and could see for miles around. We were the cloud level, not above it, not below it, it was us! It was incredible, but soon the weather started to turn so we had to turn back and get down and continue with the rest of the route.

We had a short but steep decent through mesh mesh volcanic sand. The easiest way to do this was to just let yourself go, run down, stabbing your feet into the ground. To our right there was a deep red, crimson if you like, crater and then emerald lakes. A beautiful green turquoise colour.

We walked across another flat crater and then made what would be our final uphill! Woopee! The descent downhill can really only be descrived as a pain in the arse. We were on the hot side of the mountain, it was burning heat, the kinda heat when you go "gee, its burning!" To top it off it was one of those annoying post office queues where it zigzags, you forever get closer, and then further away again. The slow germans in front didn't help!

The final final stage of the walk, where we were averaging a good 6 km an hour, was through rainforest, humid bloody rainforest, beautiful but humid. The kinda humid where you would go...

To make matters worse there was no water anywhere. The water taps depend on rain, and well its a drought....we ran out of water and expecting there to be water at the end we practically ran, i wanted to...but there was no water and no bus for an hour, we sat, burning like a Peking Duck for an hour until the bus arrived.

I bought some trainers. Andreas and i met up and finally had that game of tennis. He annhialted me, but i had just hiked 25 kms in less than 6 hours! I managed to get a few games off him.

I have already missed half the story though. The Tennis Courts belonged to Taupo tennis club who had a match night on. We spoke to the lovely chairperson Moira who said we could play. Afterwards she approached us and asked if one of us would mind hanging around to play for the club because they were a player down. I obliged, stupidly, i was bloody knackered! I played three matches, fully expecting to get my arse handed to me. But i won. All three. One was against the coach! How chuffed was i??!!

Peace Out!

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