Return to Te Wahipounamu

Yep, I’ve come back to the south island, the place of greenstone, and it’s good to be back. I had a really good trip down the north island, I enjoyed it much more than the trip up even though I mainly visited places I’d already been. First stop was Waitomo, which exists pretty much to let people visit some of the hundreds of caves in the area. It’s set amongst some typical north island countryside, lots of green hills and sheep but gets really interesting underground. I only had the chance to visit one cave, Ruakuri; it’s only been outfitted for tours recently so it’s got all modern walkways and is entered via a huge shaft that’s got this cool spiral ramp leading down to some airlocks – if I ever get an underground fortress built it will be something like that.



Revisited Rotorua briefly, basically just to do one of the Maori cultural shows with the hangi (which had been recommended to me mainly on the basis that they served good lamb. It wasn’t half bad either, amazing what you can cook in a hole in the ground really). It was set out at this forest village and had a pretty good atmosphere, although it did have a bit of a Survivor feel to it and was a little bit rushed to fit everything in. Everyone had a fun night though, and a lot of us travelled on to Taupo together so it was one of those great times which only happen occasionally when you’re travelling, where you fall in with a great group of people for a little while before you all head your separate ways again.

After spending a few days waiting around in Taupo, the weather finally cleared and a few of us got to do the Tongariro Crossing, a one day walk which crosses the saddle between Tongariro and Ngauruhoe, two of the three volcanoes in the centre of NZ’s north island. It was an awesome day, there was still heaps of snow up on the mountains and while there were some serious looking clouds following us all day they didn’t catch up until we’d finished the hardest sections, but it did mean we had to keep moving pretty much constantly. At times we were walking across flat expanses of snow, with mountains rearing up on either side, no view of the world below and the only sound the thundering of avalanches on the slopes above, it might as well have been in Antarctica. It felt like it too when the wind was howling across the very top ridges, it was really, really cold (it would be hard to say exactly how cold, but taking into account the windchill factor if I had to guess, I would say bloody) and it was strong enough to make sure you kept well back from the crater rims.



Red Crater in particular was amazing, a gaping hole in the side of the mountain filled with steam and that familiar sulphur smell which will always remind me of Rotorua). The soil on the rim of this crater was warm enough to keep the snow off and the descent was so much fun (particularly after the attractively named Devil’s Staircase) and left me feeling so full of energy I wanted to sprint across the next flat stretch. That feeling disappeared pretty much completely the moment when we had to start the next uphill stretch, stepping literally in everyone else’s footprints as they were the only places on the icy snow you could actually get a foothold. The descent was quite long and a little bit on the ordinary side after everything we’d already seen, with stretches of tussock grassland and rainforest that seemed to go on forever. Once we got back to town and looked back across the lake at the mountains I was struck by a new sense of scale (they’re like, really, really big) and felt that usual sense of unreality you get coming back to civilization after that kind of experience, where you can hardly believe you’d ever been up there. Then I had pizza, which is easy to believe in.



Headed down to Wellington again after that, took tings pretty easy there (saw Little Miss Sunshine at the movies – it’s quite a good film) and caught the ferry back across to Picton. Did a day-walk on the Queen Charlotte Track, which was quite pleasant although I think as pleasant as the Marlborough Sounds are, it would all start to look the same after a few days so one’s probably enough for me. Heading across to Nelson next and up to Abel Tasman National Park from there, and that will be it for all these beaches and I can get back to my mountains again.