No Tongarario but we visited auntie!

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Next morning the weather was as bad as the previous day, so once again Tongarario was closed. Massively disappointed we headed for the thermal pools nearby. They turned out to be a mini version of those at Yellowstone (not that I´ve made it there yet), complete with some instense colours and unbelievably clear water. Also in this mini reserve were a whole bunch of egg-smelling cooking stoves for frying-up steaks for a picnic in true New Zealand style! Cooking this naturally must be good for the environment but I´m not sure flavouring everything with essence of sulphur is exactly a favourite of your average picnic enthusiast!

Things seemed to be against us that morning what with the walk being closed and then the water pump for the big thermal bathing pool turning out to be broken. However, not to worry - Maurie (drive) to the rescue. As luck would have it his great auntie lived 5 minutes around the corner and had a "massive" thermal hot-tub at the back of her house. So off he trundled to ask her if he could park the tour bus out the front and let the 15 or so people in it hop into her hottub.

Having last been there when he was about eight, Maurie´s grasp of the actual dimesions of the hot-tub were somewhat skewed...there was absolutely no way we were going to manage to fit more than five people into it, nevermind 15! It was great though, even if rediculously hot to the point where you feel giddy - or is that the sulphur?!

After successfully turning the white parts on my shorts yellow, we headed upstairs into a cosy home for a cup of tea and scones - absolute Magic! Its great to find homely places full of character when travelling through so many hostels, generally devoid of the personal touches you get in someone´s house. It turned out that Maurie´s great aunt was actually going to do a skydive next year, aged 60! Nutter.

As we couldn´t walk the mountains Maurie took us for a drive up to the ski resorts so we could at least get an idea of what the area was like. It was truly amazing with huge volcanic bolders littering the landscape...some of the most recent ones only landed a couple of years ago and Ngauruhoe is due to erupt again sometime this year. Once we were back down the mountain it stopped hammering down with rain and we were able to at least go on a short hike from Whakapapa out to Taranaki Falls - what great names!

Everything on this walk to and from the waterfall was beautiful, and by the end of it there were blue skies once again. The walk was also a bit of a lesson in psychology for me. Chatting to a girl who was studying it I started to find out about the various theories and opposites, but more even more interesting...that you can do the Myer Briggs Type Indicator test online and its that same stuff that companies use so I´ll have to check it out before applying for jobs!

En route back from the walk the clouds finally cleared around Mount Tongarario (Mt Doom from Lord Of The Rings), though not for quite long enough for us to stop the bus, hop out and grab a photo...nearly though!

That night we stopped at an awesome hostel called The Park, complete with massive living room complete with log fire, kitchen, tabletennis and TV room. It was an absolute joy to sit down to a nice dinner in something which was once again so homely! That evening it was time to make up for not doing the walk with some "rock climbing" at the local climbing wall. It was awesome fun and a great challenge...even greater when my forearms wouldn´t release after the fifth climb - worrying how little exercise I must be doing for that to happen! Totally randomly I bumped into Seb and Kate from our Chiang Mai trek, so spent some of the evening in my very homely hostel catching up and plotting South America.

That night I also learnt just how big a knot you get if you leave the laces on your shoes when washing them at the same time as your clothes! D'oh!