Catching up...

Oy vey! I am way behind in my blogging.... Armed with a delicious avocado and a bag of Australian tortilla chips, I shall see if I can catch up...

I think I left off at Red Crater on Tongariro Crossing. From there we descended down to the Emerald Lakes, stinky sulphuric lakes that are unearthly blue-green and warm from the geothermic activity under them. Here, and all along this leg of the trip, the track was swarming with "trampers" (the Kiwi word for hikers). This stretch of the hike, known as the Tongariro Crossing, an 11 mile trail up and across the Tongariro volcano, is one of the most popular day-hikes in all of New Zealand. It isn't an easy hike, but it is just within reach of someone of pretty average fitness, so during the peak vacation times, the trail is very busy. At the visitors' center in Whakapapa Village, there was a photograph of the Crossing where people were literally one right behind the other in a line going up the trail. The amazing thing is that almost all the trampers were from overseas! Luckily, Maa'yan, Tomer and I had a much less congested day- but it was still much busier than any other trail I have ever been on.

Luckier still, our route headed us away from the crowds in the afternoon and down into the Oturere Valley. Looking up behind us, we could see the steam rising from the natural vents in the volcano, and sulphur lingered in the air- a constant reminder of all that is going on under the surface. The trail was initially steep, down a rocky slope, but then it landed us in a beautiful desert-like valley with dark sand and nothing growing but tussock grasses, lichen, and a few hardy flowering plants. Like the volcanic plain we crossed at the start of the day, here too were the large blocks of stone thrown from the volcano many years ago.

This track led us to Oturere hut, where we again met the Dutch guys from Christmas night in Mangatepopo Hut, as well as other trampers from Europe, one other Israeli, and a couple of Kiwis. We ate well and I slept very deeply after the long day.

In the morning, Tomer woke both me and Maa'yan, saying, "You've got to see the sunrise!!" I tried to get up, I really did, but instead I settled on looking out the window from my bunk (and gazing few more moments at the inside of my eyelids as well), missing of course, what Tomer was encouraging us to come see. Eventually, I did get up, and saw the very last of the sunrise over a thick bank of fog in the valley below. It was stunning, and Tomer copied his beautiful photographs for me- you can see it above left. Next time, I'll get up!

The hike that day was mostly across barren hills that came down like fingers from the mountain. The wind was intense, which made quite clear why there was so little vegetation. We climbed gradually up and over several of these fingers entertaining ourselves on the windy, barren trail with as many Beetles songs as we could remember. Eventually, we descended into a deep ravine. It was so strange though, because on the side we came down, it was almost entirely bare, but at the bottom, there was suddenly a forest, rich and lush and green, in the lee of the next steep hill, and kept green by the river a little further along. I have never seen anything like it, nothing even close. The trail literally went from desert to forest in one step. One step sand, next step soft forest floor... Once out of the lee however, the forest shrank to scrub, and the wind returned.

That afternoon we decided to continue past the hut and to backcountry came instead. We found a lovely, sheltered spot along side an old dry wash bed. It was raining off and on at this point but we were still giddy with the excitement of setting up camp (maybe not everyone feels this way, but I love to sleep in a tent out in the backcountry!). We made ourselves a delicious meal on Tomer's camp stove (we all have the same one, Maa'yan's and mine stayed at the hostel), and when it started raining again we all piled into the tent I brought along (thank you, Sarah and Rob- it is great!!) It was a bit crowded, but we still found room to play a few games of "Set."

The next day, we packed up camp in the drizzling rain and headed out from our sheltered wash bed and were greeted by crazy headwinds and driving rain. It was bad. Really bad. It was freezing cold, and I was miserable. The winds were coming on strong from the west, and our trail headed west all day long. While I had been the slowest of the three on the first days of our hike, I was in the lead this day. I just wanted to get out of the wind! Yuck! No pictures from that part of the trail! Ah, but I survived... And at the end of the trail the wind let up a bit and the skies cleared, and we had a good lunch, and we saw a beautiful waterfall and everything was okay.

Well, that about sums up that adventure! From there we took a shuttle back to the hostel in Turangi and made our next plan- to Rotorua!