To Middle Earth And Back

After refreshing ourselves with pancakes topped with everything you can imagine; including sausages on Sunday, we said goodbye to Parbs and took the bus the following day to middle earth, which is quite a drive away. Ok we didn't really go to middle earth but we did go to the filming sight of the Lord Of the Rings trilogy in National Park. While there we embarked on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 19.4km walk which goes up to 1900m above sea level. We started rather early to do this crossing boarding the bus at 7 with our fellow walkers (mainly Germans again; seriously is it a right of passage to go to NZ in Germany, there seems to be more Germans than kiwis here). The start of the crossing was simple enough just a track winding its way along the river until it met devils staircase, a rather long steep uphill section of the track which we found appropriate to sing stairway to heaven on. We eventually made it to the saddle of two peaks where rather thick snow still lay on the track, covering the marker polls in places, but onwards we march feeling like we were on a Antarctic adventure, not in the middle of New Zealand. after a while we made it to the most challenging part of the walk, the foot of red crater. To get to the top we had to walk around 1km on a fairly steep gradient, but to make matters worse the track was either really loos gravel so for every step forward you slipped back half a step or really heavy snow which just sapped your energy to walk in, so it was a bit tricky to get to the top, but we made it and at the top were the Germans along with a few frogs (the french kind) demanded red wine to celebrate...but we didn't have any so down the other side we went. Going down was much more fun, in places you could slide across the snow and on the loos gravel you just let gravity do the work. Also while going down the weather started to clear and reveal the beautiful view below, but unfortunately my camera ran out of battery so there is no amazing photo to show you the view, guess you'll just have to walk up there yourself if you want to see it. From here we crossed another saddle until we made it to the decent point were we bumped into the DOC (department of conservation) guys who were appalled that we didn't have alpine gear and assured us of our certain death as well would have to go round an ice ledge with a shear drop of a few hundred feet onto the jagged rocks below. So i though that was it, this is how i go, up a mountain surround by Germans. But as your reading this now you can see that wasn't the case. To our delight the ledge wasn't a ledge and the shear drop was more of a steep slide and we made it around with ease where we followed the path back to the car park to be picked up 2hrs ahead of schedule. So all in all a rather good walk but we didn't see any orcs i guess they have seconds homes and leave the area in winter conditions. The following day we went for a  climb on the climbing wall at the hostel which was good fun then the following day we followed a mud path to the middle of now where to see a waterfall drop 50ft into a pool below. It was a rather beautiful stop in the middle of the jungle, all alone with a wonderful panoramic view of the surroundings with only the sounds of the fall and the birds for company, oh and Davey of course.