Tongariro River Motel Taupo

... 1492;חלק האחרו 03; ולהתח 02;ק מן המדרג 93;ת.

טיפ ;ים

• חייבי ם לקחת אתכם הרבה מים (לפחות שלוש ...
  Tongariro National Park, North Island, New Zealand sivana

... but there were two problems, one I kept having to remember to sit down. Standing up on a mountain bike path gives you no traction, unlike touring where you need to stand up on hills to give yourself enough power to move you luggage (and the weight added by one to many bacon and eggs). So after a nice sit down to get up hill, I then went back down hill again, as is the NZ way and that’s when I found problem number two.
It wasn ...

... to John Birkett in the pub who looked and acted just like him! He's a big mountain biker and is going to take me on a tiki tour apparently which means he's going to lend me one of his bikes and take me on a guided tour... that'll save me around $50!
After finding out I wasn't going to be starting at the pub until the following week I decided to head up to Rotarua for the weekend with Lola... it was good to get out of Taupo and the rain ...

... and have spent the last few days travelling down from auckland through whitianga, rotorua, waitomo and now Taupo. We've met so many really nice people on the bus so we're having a lot of fun haniging out with them during the days and the evening drinking games and general merryment! in Rotorua we saw a traditional Maori show and little villiage which was awesoem as they fed us the BIGGEST buffet you have ...

... National Park. So we parked up in the evening at a campsite in Ohakune where we spent a really enjoyable evening chatting and sharing wine with a lovely spanish couple and an english couple from the Lake District.

In the morning we drove into the park to the information centre and did two, 2-hour long walks. First of all we did the Silica Rapids walk which runs alongside a little river, which has ...

... path to meet me.. the others have already been waiting for thirty minutes and they thought I fell and injured myself. (guess I walk pretty slow after all.) "ha, well, that was very nice of you to come look for me!" after all the silence and nature my voice sounds harsh, unclean. I keep silent until we are out of the forest and back to gravel and cars and plastic info signs. So, I did it!!! I had a "challenge" and I was scurred, and I did it anyway! *more glory fist shakes*

Up at 5 and after kindly being dropped off by Jenny at the train station downtown Auckland - borded the Overlander. The Overlander is the train that runs the length of the North island in a 12 hour trip once daily. This is far from a comuter train. The train driver is your tour guide, you have cinema style seating and wide screen panoramas of film set wilderness scenery ...

... a botched car radio - delightful. Our backpackers in National Park was adjacent to Whakapapa village (& village I use loosely). There is a huge climbing wall in the hostel as well as a fully equipped kitchen. Behind lies a cafe, in front a bar & just around the corner a petrol station with a little supermarket. Other than that, pickings are slim with your only company being mountains & solitude. Only ...

... Irish bar! Result.

We unpacked and then set off to watch the replay of the fight, which was an hour late arriving because what I hadn't appreciated was that the barman was (illegally) taping the fight at home and then bringing the video in for us to watch in the bar!

Anyway, we worked our ...