River Valley never disappoints. I was able to finagle myself a quasi-similar working arrangement to last time, and this time I even brought my own beer to save money at the bar. I spent my days helping out the 2 current slaves at their duties, and my nights hanging out and trading stories with the staff. During the day on Sunday, my last day in the valley, I was able to take a hike across the river to get a whole new perspective on the lodge.
On my last night there the staff threw down the drinking gauntlet. Conveniently, that was also the night I broke out my new panda-face tank top, which is now pretty much my most-prized possession. We partied the night away, and the next day I hopped in a car with a few of the raft guides to leave the valley for the last time. I caught a ride with the guides to Taupo, my planned next stop, and hung out with them for the night until they had to get back to work.
I found my way to a hostel, and was put into Room 18, a room which will live in infamy. My first day was uneventful, and I called it an early night because I'd set up my last New Zealand hike for the next morning: the Tongariro Alpine Crossing!
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a shortened version of the Tongariro Alpine Circuit, another one of NZ's great walks. It's a 19km day hike across an otherworldly volcanic landscape, which includes Mount Ngauruhoe, otherwise known as Mount Doom from The Lord of the Rings movies. I joined up with a crew of four other hostel guests who were heading to the trek as well. The bus to the base of the mountain picked us up from the hostel at 5:30am, and got us started at the mountain by 7am. The bus started us from the valley below Mt Doom and Mt Tongariro at 7am, just as the clouds surrounding the mountain peaks were starting to break.
A few kilometers in, the valley steepened into a rock face with an unending set of wooden steps, called the Devil's Staircase. After an exhausting hour on nature's stairmaster, we made it to the South Crater, a vast flat brown wasteland framed by Mt Doom to the South and Mt Tongariro to the North. The Ngauruhoe summit walk is more challenging, but when we made it to the trailhead the mountain's peak was still heavily covered in clouds, so we pressed on.
When we made it to the trailhead for the Tongariro summit, the clouds were finally starting to clear and we hoped they'd let us have a good view once we got there.
The clouds cleared for about 15 minutes, giving us time for some great shots of the surrounding volcanoes and craters.
We made our way back from the summit, and continued the trek to the next crazy beautiful natural wonders: the Red Crater and the Emerald Lakes.
We left the lakes and continued our walk out of the valley, and away from the main volcanic summits. After a long walk, we left the lifeless crater land for the highlands, and a valley that showed us the long way down.
I spent most of the second half of the hike convincing my hiking buddies to join me for my traditional post-hike burger, which mostly consisted of all of us salivating at the prospect of a great meal. Wednesday night in the hostel was a ridiculous experience, especially considering we'd been hiking all day. I've had some awesome hostel roommates throughout this trip, but Room 18 at the Taupo Urban Retreat was out of this world. 8 people, and all of us got along and had an awesome few days together. We started drinking at 8:30, and by around 11 we were ready for a very drunken stumble to the Taupo Hot Pools, a natural hot spring that feels just like a hot tub with a waterfall.
Thursday was a day of coffee and some distracted book reading (working on The Poisonwood Bible now), capped off with a Room 18 taco feast and beer pong. We ended the night with a showing of Iron Man 3.
Friday morning I said goodbye to my new friends and caught the most unpleasant bus ride of my life to Auckland, the city where it all started. The bus ride was not-so-fun for a few key reasons:
1. The bus was 100% full.
2. It was the hottest day of my entire NZ trip
3. The air conditioning wasn't working, because of course
So I spent 6 hours in the back row of a hot bus, wedged between a window and a very large lady, with a reclined seat in my face and the intense desire to be anywhere else in the world. All was better when I finally made it to Auckland and took a much needed nap.
On Friday night Lisa, my friend from Queenstown and an Auckland native, had invited me to a flat-warming party for her coworkers in order to show me that Auckland wasn't quite so drab as it seemed my first time through. Myth dispelled. I spent a fun night drinking and chatting in a room where I was probably the least educated person, as everyone else was a lawyer. I also played more than my fair share of beer pong, and had an excellent time in general. I'll say this for Auckland, the locals are a ton of fun once you get to know them.
Which brings us to today, Saturday. I woke up and walked outside, face to face with Auckland's Civic Theater, which is showing the Broadway musical Wicked. One of my Room 18 folks had informed me that a couple hours before every show the box office has a raffle for a small supply of $35 tickets. I showed up and threw in my name. I didn't win.
However, the raffle was for up to 2 tickets, and me being alone I only entered for 1. At the end of the raffle, the lady in charge realized they had only one ticket left, and wanted to know if anyone in the crowd was looking for just a single ticket. In the middle of a whole bunch of grumpy looking couples, there's me with my hand up. Yup, the only one. So I got the $35 ticket anyway!
Awesome!
Wicked was fantastic. I've been listening to the soundtrack for years, and it was nice to finally put an order to the songs and a face to the voices. Glenda stole the show with an incredible performance, and the whole cast was amazing. That's money well spent on one of my last few days in New Zealand.
Whaaaaaa? My last few days in New Zealand? Yeah. More to come on that in a couple days once I've got everything sorted!
Cheers,
Jared
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