Riddles in the Dark, Mt. Doom, and the Flight to the Ferry

Sam was finally frustrated enough with surfing to try, gasp, horror, caving and hiking. Our first stop was Waitomo, home to the most touristy caves in New Zealand. Here, in true Kiwi adventure tourism spirit, you can rappel (they call it abseiling) or climb or blackwater raft in the dark on inner tubes. We decided to start out with just the simple tour and boat ride, which was cheap, could be done in an afternoon, and best of all did not involve getting wet in a freezing cold cave. We got to see the very cool limestone formations, and listen to the group cheer of a Japanese tour group echo throughout the cave complex. Nobody in our group was brave enough to burst into song a la Moulin Rouge to test out the echo. Not even Sam! Unbelievable! Even if he didn't burst into song, he could have at least done a creepy Gollum imitation for us, but no, nothing! Oh well. Then they loaded us in a boat for a 15 minute boatride - actually 15 minutes floating in place in a little cave looking at the glowworms on the cave roof. These were pretty cool but they slimed Sam with their moskie-catching ooze. And that was pretty much it. I actually thought the highlight was the redwoods by the entrance - just like home! Apparently redwoods grow three times faster in NZ than in their native California.

Not wanting to camp with a bunch of disappointed, freezing, and/or battered tourists, we drove out to the coast on another beautiful but windy road and stayed in a caravan park by the beach. The locals looked at us like they saw maybe three tourists a week and still couldn't see why the number of visitors was so high. But it was a nice caravan park next to some frisky horses that I swear hopped the fence and got into our trash later. Unless it was a kangaroo - just kidding - we're not in Australia anymore Toto! Probably a possum, which actually were introduced from Australia, who knows why. There were also some cows that Sam kept taking pictures of; Sam insisted they looked just like his dog Louie.

The next day we decided to save our money for bungy jumping so we skipped more cave adventures and drove towards yet another tourist destination: Mt. Doom. Ok, ok, they have some "real" name for it like Tongariro National Park or something, home of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, New Zealand's most famous hike. We checked out the visitor center and observed our first kiwi: stuffed, next to a stuffed stoat, the kiwi's nemesis. They couldn't even give the poor bird dignity in death! We picked up the schedule for the shuttle because the Alpine Crossing is a one way hike (unless you do an overnight.) Then we did a short hike to a nice waterfall. Nice waterfalls are a dime a dozen in NZ, most are barely mentioned in the guidebook and don't even have names. In California or Australia there would be a million tourists oohing and aahing but we didn't see any other tourists until, lucky us, an entire busload of school children appeared. So we headed out to the National Park campgrounds.

NZ national park campgrounds are mostly on an "honesty" system where you drop money and your license plate number into a box. Clearly they have unrealistically high expectations of foreign tourists. At Tongariro somebody had even stolen all the envelopes. Anyway we got a nice little spot and sat back to watch the crowds roll in. Eventually we had to share the spot with some nice girls from Israel. As with most Israelis we had met on our travels, they were fresh out of the army and traveling for awhile before going to university. (They have compulsory service for both men and women there.) The girls were super nice and gave us more tips on NZ.

The next morning we woke up early to catch the 9am shuttle bus and joined the tourist train doing the Alpine Crossing. The crossing goes by two big volcanoes, Tongariro and Ruapehu. The latter erupted recently and looks just like Mt. Doom. It was in fact used in the filming of LOTR. You can optionally climb it, but we judged that our hobbit feet were not well-developed enough yet, so we skipped it. Also we forgot the One Ring back at the van so we didn't have anything to toss in the crater. Plus it looked about as fun as climbing a giant sand dune anyway.

At first the tourist train we'd been warned about was not too bad, but as we approached rougher terrain it did get pretty busy. Most of the tourists did not look like they should be on this hike! They were having serious trouble sliding down the rough lava scree. Only the overnight trekkers with hiking poles had any confidence. Later we passed a girl who had unfortunately broken her ankle and was waiting for a helicopter evacuation. We were both envious (free helicopter tour!) and argued about which of us should pretend to have the broken ankle. Ok, ok, it probably sucked, poor girl.



The hike involved lots of interesting volcanic scenery, which was impressive if not exactly beautiful - no shire here! The second half also had pretty emerald green lakes, creatively called the Emerald Lakes. The hike ended up, surprisingly, in a lush beech forest, which we did not stop to admire because by that point we were running our asses off trying to get away from the tourist train and also trying to catch the 3pm shuttle bus. Apparently in NZ when they say it is a six hour hike, they really mean it.

We were pretty much done with Mt. Doom so we beelined it all the way to Wellington. We wanted to do the South Island before it got seriously cold there since we were already freezing our asses off up north! On the way we just had to stop at a Chinese "takeaway." We'd been seeing these things everywhere and found it curious that all the Chinese places sold fish and chips and burgers in addition to Chinese food. So we tried the burgers and guess what - they were just like the burgers in Southeast Asia! Maybe all the burger joints in Asia are really run by kiwi Asians. Basically the burger patty was the size of a silver dollar, and consisted of: 95% bread crumbs, 3% soy, 1% Chinese five spice, and 1% unknown beef product. Next time: bacon and egg burger, hold the burger. But don't worry, later there would be redemption when we learned that the Chinese food at these places is great.

Arriving in Wellington, we asked at a motel outside of town where we could park our van and sleep in the area, and they helpfully told us that there was a great location with lots of campervans just across the railroad tracks. We drove down and looked at it, and then drove back to the motel and re-read the motel sign which advertised spa baths. Then we looked at the coating of volcanic dust all over ourselves. Not much of a decision here. So we indulged in a night in a motel with a spa bath. The next morning we got up early to catch the ferry to the South Island.