Taupo...

Taupo was another place I was excited to visit as you could do the Tongariro crossing in the national park home to Mount Doom featured in Lord of the Rings which we were to explore on our second day. First off though most of the group went off to do a skydive, having already done one I opted to have a nap, a much more relaxing way to spend this afternoon. When the others returned we went to get some supplies for our hike the next day then went to the bar downstairs for the pub quiz which was one of the longest and most boring pub quizzes I have ever done, the questions were way too hard and I quickly lost interest although we did come second with a lot of help from a blackberry. The next morning a few of us eagerly got up at 5am to catch the bus to Mount Doom for an all day hike only to be disappointed after an hour in the bus the driver had told us reports had come through to say the weather was too bad around the mountain meaning the conditions would have been too dangerous for us to do the hike. We were gutted. The buss dropped us back at the hostel and we all went back to bed. The weather there being much better we decided to head down to the river where there was a natural hot spring. The water was lovely, just like sitting in a hot tub. The further you went out into the river the water was still hot on top but cold at the bottom it was really strange. Once we got too hot we messed around for a while taking standard traveling pictures of us all jumping which took a while and also turned out to look pretty cool. On the way back to the hostel we picked up some drink, played some drinking games in our room before heading out. Turned out to be a good day after such a bad start.