DeeKnow’s Grotto

Have just walked into the house after spending the day doing a wicked 6-hour walk/tramp known as the Tongariro Crossing. Its NZs supposed best-single-day walk, that sounds a bit wanky I know, but it really was friggin excellent.

The weather was great today, the views were wicked and well worth the trudge up to the saddle between the two volcanoes Ngarahoe and Tongariro. There were crap-loads of other people (mostly tourits) doing the walk today too, we counted over a hundred multi-coloured jackets weaving away up the slopes ahead of us at one point.

Man I love walking in alpine areas, dont do enough of it really. Took loads of photos, in fact most of the talk on the day especially amongst the touro-s was the features their digital camera's supported, and how long their zoom-lenses were.

Oh and there was load of talk about the lord-of-the-rings of course, as part fo the movie was shot on the moutain. A group of english girls asked us kiwis if we knew were Mt-Doom was, we were sure there hadn't been any eruption of late to pop up a new mountain, so they went home a little  dissapointed.

No-one saw Gollum walking about in the hills either, but that gave me a great idea for scaring tourists, dress up in orc outfits and run accross the landscape in the distance brandishing swords, or jump out from behind rocks to scare-the-sheise out of them.

There were six of us in our group, Graham, Jamie and Jo from my work, and friends of mine Dave and Sasha and myself. We all drove down on Friday night from Hamiltron to National Park where we stayed in a hostel Friday night.

9:50:35 PM