Grace's "There and Back Again" DAY 7

Woke up early in the morning, and we decided today was going to be an EASY day! Out bodies are sore and tired. We took the opportunity of having a full kitchen at the campsite and made a huge breakfast that included bacon, sunny-side up eggs, yogurt, toast and coffee.

After breakfast, the first stop was Wai-O-Tapu. We joined the overly-eager crowds to watch the geyser shoot hot water about 20m up high in the air. After that, we just walked around enjoying the view of the various uniquely-colorful thermal springs. It is hard to describe the strange colors of the thermal pools, and even the photos from our great camera couldn't portray their uniqueness! While walking around, you could hear Hannah and Grace moaning when they encountered stairs or slopes, reminding them how sore their bodies were after conquering Mount Doom!

The world-famous champagne pool!

At the carpark in Wai-O-Tapu, we came upon a poorly parked camervan. The van actually took up 4 parking spaces, and for no reason! And parking spaces are rare commodity during the summer time... So, Grace took the time to write a wonderful reminder and we left it at the windscreen of the van.

Next stop - HOBBITON!... Hannah and Grace definitely control themselves well (NOT!) and did not show any fan-craze excitement (NOT!). It was a wonderful tour of the movie set (which is located in a farm), and had a drink at the Green Dragon Inn... My personal opinion is that it would be even better that they allow us more time to be at the Green Dragon Inn to take in all the amazement instead of rushing us all back to the bus .... However, it is definitely worth a visit for any Hobbit or LOTR fans.

Very, very calm.

It was a tiny little beehive. They were excited about it.

See how calm?

THE GREEN DRAGON!!!! DRINKING A BEER IN THE GREEN DRAGON!!! OMG!!!

We spent the night camping at Opal Springs, Matamata, in order to soak our tired bones some more. We took the chance to look at each other's sun-burns. Grace had weird sun-burn marks on her side of her face and her knuckles!... Lesson of the day - remember to spread your sunscreen evenly on your face and body :)

Total distance drove - 1550km (963 miles)

Its hard to see in the photo, but it was very distictly a line across the brow
and a circle on her temple. She was pleased

Grace's "There and Back Again" DAY 6

Today we climbed Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom). We did not do the entire Tongariro Crossing as it was partially closed due to Mt Tongariro erupting several times, and also out of respect for Mom who did not want to have to worry about both her daughters climbing an erupting volcano. So instead we hiked to (10 km!) and summited the one and only Mount Doooom.  No words can describe the difficulty, hardship, magical moments, tiredness, soreness, out-of-breath, altitude sickness syndrome...but we spent 2.5 hours climbing over loose gravel and up lava flows to reach the snowy crater, and 45mins sliding down the loose rock on this 2287m (7503 feet) mountain. Well, the pictures may tell a better story.... Unfortunately  due to the cold, the camera battery died before we reached the summit. You will either have to climb it yourself or take our word for it, the view was incredible and the feeling amazing.

We spent the night soaking our sore body in the hot thermal pools at Taupo De Bretts Spa Resort. We meant to go to our favorite small campground attached to some hot springs - Waikite Spa Resort but the weekend crowd beat us to it! :( Well, luckily we managed to get a camp ground in De Bretts, and even had a 40 deg C (104 deg F) private thermal pool :) Dinner was delicious - Hannah's great choice, highly recommended Shayne's Fresh Fish n Chips.

Food to introduce to Grace - NZ Fresh Fish and Chips ✓

Only Hannah knew what we were in for...

See Mom? We stayed well away from the danger zone!

Some Bon Jovi-esque YEAAAAHHHHS! to get us pumped

Still so fresh and happy!

It is a very exposed climb.

Hannah was very tired

The view is so worth it though!

Grace's "There and Back Again" DAY 5

It was a VERY warm morning! We had camped at the car park by the Aranui cave. The van proves to be really good for freedom-camping so far, with the newly improved bed frames, the kitchen cabinet and the fold-out table. The sisters (Hannah and Grace) were definitely having the best time of their lives, and it showed REALLY clearly with their bickering at each other until the late hours of the night :P .... and I trying to block them out so that I can catch a good night sleep.... (editor's note: Sonny obviously does not understand sisterly love...that bickering was expressions of the highest affection!)

Hannah and Grace would be going on the Waitomo cave tour. Although we had seen glow worms the night before on the free trail walk, we decided it would be a different experience for Grace. I decided to stay back in the van because my exacts words - "you seen one glow worm, you seen all glow worms!" How different can they be!..:) " Therefore only Hannah and Grace went for their tour which consisted 2 caves - the disney-like glow worm cave tour, which according to them featured a hilarious hand-signalling-slow-talking guide, and the Aranui cave. The reason they decided to go with the usually scorned huge operator was a time crunch - they were the only operators offering tours at 9 am. We  wanted to show Grace the glowworms, but also to get back on the road asap to head down to Mt Taranaki. While the big huge glowworm cave was a little cheesy with tiled flooring and an overly enthusiastic gesticulating guide, the boat ride at the end in complete silence under glow worm filled "skies" was pretty amazing. For an additional twist, the tour culminates in riding the boat all the way out of the cave on a little river, which is how the original discovering Maoris entered. They were NOT impressed however, with the infinitely cheesy photo pack the gift shop tried to sell them, consisting of a single green screen photo of them imposed on various scenes within the car. Grace literally laughed in the woman's face when she saw how terribly done it was. The second cave was much cooler, full of really amazing formations and with a much smaller crowd. While they were enjoying themselves, I was enjoying a beer, the left-over Nandos chicken in the comfort of the van, while watching people in the car park.

After their tour, we visited two other places nearby. Hannah and I had never visited these place before so we thought it is a good idea to see them - the Mangapohue Natural Bridge and Marokopa Falls. Along the winding road, we (unfortunately) bumped into these two fat, loud, show-off women (TWICE!) in their overly large, gas-wasting Hummer. One of them was changing in their car as well (according to Hannah)...thanks God I did not witness that :P .. As we were walking on the trail, Grace developed a persistent hiccup that just wouldn't go away. Hannah reminded me that I used to scare the soul out of her in order to cure her hiccup (Well... I cannot take credit for the method. I learned it on Google :P ). And guess what!- It worked on Grace as well!...She also got her soul scared out of her, but it cured her hiccups.

 

After the walk, a quick lunch, we started driving along the west coast towards Tongariro. Along the way, we saw Mount Taranaki (which Hannah said we are going to climb it someday!) and Grace got to soak her feet in the Tasman Sea. Hannah suggested that we took the Forgotten Highway. It was a very scenic road which very few cars, but it turned out to be much, much, much longer than we expected! We had to drive through the mountains, up and down those steep slopes along this GOD-FORGOTTEN-NOT-A-SINGLE-SOUL-IS-PRESENT highway, and by the end we were VERY LOW on gas!

Someone up there must be watching us! We passed by several towns, but these towns consisted of only a few houses, and there were no gas stations! The van slowly, and I mean very slowly crawl its way up and down the hills, and with all our cheering and encouragement, we made it to the first town that has a gas station - Taumarunui! Pheewww...... after we got a full tank of gas, we drove on trying to get as close as possible to Tongariro because the plan for tomorrow is to do the Tongariro crossing. We spent the night at DOC campsite in the shadows of Mount Ruapehu.