Tongariro Crossing

After my 30 minutes of adrenaline I needed to do something quiet and soothing to relax, so I decided to hike across some mountains, doing the so called Tongariro Crossing, which is 17km long and considered NZ's best one day walk.

The alarm clock rang @ 6am and the usual "what the hell am I doing this for feeling" kept me attached to the bed like glue, but somehow I managed to escape its huge gravitational forces and was sitting in a cold bus fifteen minutes later. The bus takes you to the start of the trek (or "tramp" as the Kiwis call it), kicks you out and waits on the other side of the mountain range 8 hours later.

So off I set with my hiking boots, rain jacket, a litre of water, two apples and a mars bar for company. It started off dark and damp, but within about an hour the sun came out and was blazing down. I made good progress and was overtaking people left, right and centre, which scared me a little as I had a niggly feeling that I might be forgetting to pace myself. I reached the first plateau after about an hour and off to my right and up about 700 meters was the summit of New Zealand's most active volcano - Mt. Ngauruhoe. For those of you not in the know, Mt. Ngauruhoe was used as Mt. Doom in the filming of the Lord of The Rings, so it is quite famous these days. The bus driver had told us not to attempt to climb it as there wasn't enough time to do the Tongariro crossing AND climb Ngauruhoe. Being a natural born anarchist, I said f**k it and climbed it.

One and a half hours of scrabbling up volcanic scree on all fours, three quarters of a kilometre vertical ascent and by the time I reached the top I felt like Edmund Hillary conquering Everest. The damn thing is 2300m high. To make matters worse, every 20 minutes a helicopter would fly by with 10 "too much money to care" tourists on board taking happy snaps of the summit and me. I think I might be featuring in a couple of Japanese photo albums this summer.

The summit is a huge crater and there are steaming vents all over the place. The smell of brimstone is rather pungent. No time to waste, still 13km to go and it's already midday. So I surf down the mountain on a wave of shale, listening to Serge Gainsbourg - Je t'aime on my iPod. Truly one of the most surreal moments of my life. On the way down I pass about 10 people all struggling for breath on the ascent. They look at me as if I am a deranged contestant in some mountain triathlon.

A hop, skip and a jump later and I pass the Tongariro south crater, then the north crater, the emerald lakes (stunning), the blue lake (blue) and I am suddenly in the last hut on the tramp at 13:30. I guzzle down about 2 litres of water and press on towards the end. Finally, 6 hours 45 minutes after I started, I hike out of the rainforest and into the carpark. I felt like a hostage seeing the day of light after 2 years in captivity. My legs felt like jelly and when I told the Maori bus driver of my feat, he just replied "Fair dinkum, bro".

My legs still hurt, but the stunning scenery, rugged mountains and lush rainforests made for one of the most memorable days on my journey thus far.