happy birthday dad and caisey!

where to begin, where to begin? okay the plan of attack for updating you all is as follows: today i will tell you day one of me and eric's 4 day journey up through tongariro national park with some help from my diary. then on another day i will tell you about our current employment on an apple orchard. and then on another day i will tell you about our abel tasman walk (which actually doesn't start until tomorrow).

day one:

"i sit just outside the oturere hut and when i look up I see mt ngarahoe! how serene and grandious - this weather, this scenery but most importantly - the vibe... it began on wednesday night as the sun dipped below the horizon, mt taranki rose from the mist until he dominated and cast his shadow upon the plains. then turning to the east, the full moon rose between the saddle of tongariro and ngarahoe, a bulb of glowing light separating and joining the mountains with a strange pulsing luminescence...

i felt like i was walking through a calender setting of new zealand's most beautiful landscapes - a boardwalk taking us across a meandering stream that trickled and moved at will... and then onwards and upwards to the dreaded satan's staircase - a 50 minute vertical climb and clamber over rocks and up to the saddle the moon had easily sauntered over the night before... the south crater lay eerily quiet and flat - a moonscape with a brown lake steaming with gas. on reaching the red crater - a detour was in order and we walked to the peak of tongariro - my tribe's mountain - my mountain - the first mountain i have ever climbed! upwards and into the land of mordor, the land of the orcs. i could picture it all so clearly - the landscape so desolate and smoking, so alien, the plateaus, the desert rock and sand, the harsh environment with no plant life, no animal life - the only life? small specks of people following a windy track to their final destination...

then we turned, downwards passed the incredible emerald lakes - downwards along a steep ridge and into an even stranger and bold landscape of large rock formations shaped like lions and apes, turtles and weird creatures - all frozen to stone at some time thousands of years before. everywhere was sand - moving and shaped into rivers and torrents, trickles and pools. boulders dumped unceremoniously by volcanic giants that still showed their power behind me. these boulders stood tall amidst the sand, proud and yet abandoned and deserted and cast into a land of dirt. the rocky desertscape continued but finally oturere hut appeared...

walking through this area - through the saddle of ngarahoe and tongariro, up tongariro, around the edge of these volcanoes, and through the pass between ruapehu and ngarahoe was a humbling experience and i would gladly walk it again."