The Quickest Year of Our Lives

Wow - time is flying by... Sorry for being so rubbish at keeping this blog up to date lately. Summer is now coming to a close, the nights are getting dark and the mornings cold. They're also selling poppies for the upcoming ANZAC (Remembrance) Day and Sarah keeps experiencing waves of Christmassy feelings. Surely it's Christmas in a month or so right?!

It's been just over a year since we waved goodbye to you at our wedding/limbo championships - and what a quick year it's been. To celebrate our first wedding anniversary Sarah and I took advantage of the last long weekend of the Summer (Easter!) to head down to a little place to the South of Taupo, called Turangi. Turangi is the springboard into the volcanic mountains at the centre of the North Island, a mountain range which has a celebrity - Lord of the Rings' very own.. Mt Doom (Ngauruhoe to use it's official Maori name). The Lonely Planet, which is always full of superlatives, calls The Tongariro Alpine Crossing through this range to be one of the best day walks in the world. Who can turn that down as an opportunity?

Day packs loaded, minibus transport booked to and from the trail ends, and up and off at about 6am while it was still dark, with the hundreds of other walkers...

Getting to the trailhead, we powerwalked the first mile to get ahead of the crowds - well worth it! With a hilly 25km ahead, and a minibus picking us up at 4pm it was time to get a wiggle on anyway...

Heading up into the volcanoes

Sunrise

Before a sharp climb to the first false ridge, and rewarded with a spectacular view of the low lying cloud in the valleys and plateaus we left behind

A sea of clouds

But, onwards and upwards to the base of Mt Doom. Cue lots of (extremely funny) sexual innuendos about Sam and Frodo...

Precious, my precious!

A pretty confusing view

The landscape was ever changing - following bubbling streams, crossing lava fields, scrambling up dusty climbs and then these beautifully flat plateaus. Here's Mt Doom in the background - no time to climb it today unfortunately!

Epic.

And then the big scramble to the lookout over the volcanic lakes, the busy turnaround point for people on the circular daywalk. Luckily for us we were on the crossing walk - so after sharing the path with hundreds, we then saw only a handful of people for the rest of the day!

Hard work coming down...

From being a pretty cool walk, it suddenly stepped up a gear with the volcanic lakes and craters coming into view.

Decided not to swim in it. Clever.

But just to remind you why the scenery is so spectacular (and smelly), there were some pretty scary signs. Sarah was very impressed when I stopped to take a photo. All in the name of a good blog, people...

Noted. 

From the ridiculous, to the sublime...

Pretty special

With the crowds left behind, the scenery was ours to enjoy on our own...

What we think was a valley filled with lava...

Before heading, down and round, down and round...

Still epic.

Heading between massive rocks that had been ejected from the nearby volcanoes. Cover your head...

MR FRODO! Where are you?!

There you are...

A long day, the sun's starting to get lower and lower behind us...

Snow! Snow! Best come back in the winter to do some skiing...

Our last view of the picture perfect Ngauruhoe

Al Lovell - Earth Walker returns!

All in all, a fantastic day. Topped off with some good kiwi hospitality at the minibus... a chilly bin filled with ice and free beer! Nothing better.

Perhaps not the most romantic/traditional way to spend Easter/our wedding anniversary, so we headed North to Taupo to scout cycle half the Ironman course. As you do. It was flat, boring, windy and lonely! Still, the day got better with a visit to an English pub and a good old pint of Pride...

As Caleb would say: Appy.

And watched the sunset over the lake

The site of the Ironman swim!

And on to the next pub for dinner - Sarah didn't have all of this to herself. Honest!

Deep fried everything.

And on to our last night of the long weekend, staying at some hot springs in the middle of nowhere... For some resting and relaxing in hot pools! Another great weekend away - with winter looming and no Christmas to look forward to... Oh!

Hot stuff!