Advertisement
Published: December 31st 2008
Edit Blog Post
Day 63 Three Volcano’s
We’ve arrived in Whakapapa. A small Ski Village which takes in three stunning volcano’s all nestled into National Park - Mount Ngauruhoe, Tongariro and Mount Ruapehu - which some of you may know as Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
- All in all, a pretty cool place to be.
We decided to undertake a guided crater walk on Mount Ruapehu.
Ruapehu reaches an impressive 2672m and is a very active volcano with snow covered slopes and a steaming crater lake at the top.
The last eruption took place in September 2007, but we were assured that things were pretty quiet at present.
The climb was very tough due to the steep and slippery snowfields and I only made it to around 2200 meters, but the Jaimster made it all the way to the summit and took some awesome pictures of the crater and the lake for us.
The are also some stunning pics of views from the neighbouring Mount Ngauruhoe and Tongariro.
Day 64 Up the Creek with two paddles
Its Wanganui river day! We drive down a narrow gravel road for around 30 kilometres and then reach the tiny village of
Pipirki. Pipirki lies 79km up the Wanganui river.
Our guide for the day is called Ken and along with his ancestors has inhabited the area for hundreds of years.
Check out the pic… he really looks the spitting image of Steve Owen.
We get kitted out in life jackets, pack our lunches and board one of my favourite modes of transport, a jet boat!
We head up river. Ken, our guide, is very informative and tells us all about the incredible history of the area. Many people have attempted to farm the lands surrounding the river banks and many have failed due to the remoteness of this beautiful area.
We stop at the Mangapurua landing and hike 40 minutes along the riverbank to reach The Bridge To Nowhere.
The Bridge was built in 1936 by 4 men and literally goes nowhere. The plan was to build a major road as a through fare to National Park but funds ran out and the road was too tough to cut out of the granite cliffs along the river.
We had our lunch on the bridge and our guide provided some hot beverages along with another interesting talk on the history of the
bridge and surrounding area.
After lunch the heavens opened and liquid sunshine set in for the rest of the day.
Our guide jetted us back down the river with a couple of 360 spins thrown in - still loving those and hope you all clubbed together to get me a jetboat for Christmas!
We were dropped at our canoe launching site and I nervously tried to take in all the safety instructions from our guide.
We would be on our own, with just a laminated map of the river, a Canadian canoe and the knowledge that we had to cross several grade I and II rapids.
For us novices out there. Rapids or white water, is graded from one to six.
Commercial rapids stop at grade five, so our grades one and two were just babies (according to Jaime).
The first rapid hit us pretty quickly and I got very nervous, paddled at the wrong time and started shouting at poor Jaime to provide exact instructions from now on.
I will get over my fear of drowning one day (I hope).
Anyway, after some initial communication problems we managed our canoe pretty well and even stopped off at a
lovely waterfall set back into a 10 meter cave.
We made it through several more nerve racking sections of the river and apart from a minor incident of getting caught on shallow rocks I nearly managed to enjoy myself.
Along the way we encountered a few floating rocks, which turned out to be pumice stones. We fished a couple out for the later use of giving our feet a nice scrub down.
Jaime was itching for more rapids, but after several hours of getting thoroughly soaked I was ready for a change of clothes and a warm bed.
Oh and PS we didn’t fall in!!!
Jaime had heard about a backpacker hostel set in a catholic nunnery a further 14km down a treacherously slippy and slidy mud track. I must admit that a few kilometres down I was ready to head back, but Jaime persisted and we found a wonderfully peaceful place to stay for the night.
The nun’s gave us the run of the house and with just another couple with a young boy staying, we could not have enjoyed the tranquillity more.
Day 65 R&R
After all these adventures its time for a little break.
We have arrived back at Juno Hall today and are planning on staying for New Years Eve, which is tomorrow.
We may go for small hike to some caves, but apart from that I plan to read a book and make sure that we don’t head into the new year with any laundry (don’t ask, its one of my mom’s superstitions - don’t go into the new year with any dirty laundry)
We only have a week left now and I am beginning to dread the long flight home, but there’s still some swimming with sharks and stingrays to undertake which I hope to tell you about soon.
So again, a very Happy New Year to You! Lots of hugs xxD
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0264s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb