Oode to Ville Peltonen

Its been a while again. And lots and lots has happened. We’ve started a new religion based on Ville Peltonen’s smile. But more about that a bit later. Last few days in Mangawhai were productive, and we even went to eat in a restaurant which was nice. On Wednesday Ngaire dropped me off to Auckland, where I had a touristy day to say the least. Just walked up and down on Queen Street, visited the national museum and stuff like that. Stayed on a pretty fine hostel for the night. Eero finally arrived on Thursday morning. I went to wait for him at a bus stop, but he decided to drop off on another bus stop and we spent half and hour searching for each other. Note to self: dont use clock towers as landmarks because there might be 10 of ‘em on the area. We spent few hours in Auckland sipping coffee, eating kebab and being lost in shopping malls.

Our next stop was Rotorua. We found a camping ground pretty close to city center, and set up our tent there. The camping site had nice facilities and was overall pretty cousy. First night on Thursday was supposed to be pretty mellow, but we ended up buying some wine, and you know how it goes. Met some local guys who served us with some rhum-coke. Well, they ended up evicted and we ended up sleeping in our tent. Friday was a rainy day, so we just hung out on the camping site, in the evening we went to do some shopping and stuff. Later on the evening we decided to go chech the local night life, which ended up being a crucial mistake, on the other hand not that much.

On our way back a chain between two poles got me and after that it was face vs concrete. You can quess the outcome of that one. Chipped a few tooth in the spirit of Ville Peltonen. Also got my face bruised a bit. We got a ride in a police car to the hospital where we spent the night. We were supposed to leave to Turangi, but the only available dentist was in Taupo, so we took a bus to Taupo village, which turned out to be a blessing. The dentist was awesome, even picked us up from the bus stop. The ACC system (dont ask) in NZ paid all my costs so that was all good. After I got my teeth back we went to the tourist information point. Earlier on we heard that the Tongariro Crossing -trek in Tongariro National Park was closed, but the nice lady in info point told us we have a few day opening. We booked ourselves for a trek on Sunday and were thrilled!! After leaving the IP we just wandered around, since we had no place to stay for the night. We found the local BASE hostel and booked ourselves in for 3 nights. This is freaking luxorious, let me tell you.

Yesterday we got up 5am, got some soup and bread for breakfast and went to the pick up point. Bus ride to the starting point in Tongariro was about an hour, and it was raining most of the time. We started the trek at around 8am. And overall it was awesome! There was snow and we even got some snow showers up there. We also went to a side trek to Mt. Tongariro summit. I didnt go all the way up, Eero summited the mountain. I was about 30 meters from the peak, but Im content. I cant tell you how cool the trek was, so I just show you some pictures from there soon. Last 7km’s it was snowing, then raining, then snowing again, and we were pretty much soaked. Obviously last night we slept really good, today is a lazy day, and tomorrow we’re leaving to Golden Bay to “release our inner hippies”. Cant wait. Stay tuned!