Mount Doom

Jen here - 

I got back from Mt. Doom yesterday morning. We were supposed to get back the night before, but because of the insane flooding, our trip (already extended by 2 hours because of flooding detours = 10 hours of driving) was stopped in Kawakawa, about 17 km away from Paihia. There are only two possible roads that one can take north from Kawakawa; one, as Liz said, was covered by a meter of water and the other was blocked with who knows how much water.

In typical NZ fashion, there was nothing on the radio which roads were closed. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that there were roads closed at all. The only thing mentioned on the radio was that there had been serious flooding and that roads HAD IN THE PAST been closed. Nice.

So, thanks to massive flooding, we spent the last night of the trip in the Kawakawa park carpark. Next to a flooded public toilet. I had a rice cake for dinner.

Anyways! The rest of the trip was awesome. 

The Tongariro Crossing is 19.4 km (excluding the two mountains) and reaches a peak trail height of 6,233 feet. Supposedly, it is rated as the best day hike in New Zealand. As I haven’t seen much of New Zealand yet, I couldn’t really tell you. I can say that although the trail wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense; with the barren and desolate landscape, there was this stark sense of beauty about it. It’s hard to describe. Hopefully the pictures below will do it a tiny bit of justice.

But the highlight of the day? Summiting MOUNT DOOM.  

When I woke up, I looked out the front room and saw Mt. Doom impressively silhouetted against the sunrise.  

My friend, who works for the Department of Conservation, then informed me that there’s no track up to the top. No track. No trail. No, “You should probably take this way.”

[Gulp.]

 The mountain (technically an inactive volcano that last erupted 36 years ago), became more impressive the closer we got. By the time we got to the base of the mountain, I was scared and excited out of my mind.  The mountain is 7500 feet and it LOOKED like we were in Mordor. The ground was covered in ash and lava rocks from the last explosion. There were no trees, no flowers, no birds, no green anything. Everything was a shade of red or black.

We watched about ten people already climbing the mountain. They had started to climb up the face of the mountain, following what kiiiiiiiind of looked like a trail leading up to the summit. All of them got about 2/3 of the way up and then had to turn back; it was too steep and dangerous to continue after that.

After watching other climbers, we headed to the left side of the mountain. 

Here was a trail of boulders and tiny rocks that looked like it continued to the summit. And so we clambered on all fours up and up the mountain, using only the rocks to pull us ahead. Often the rocks that you thought were lodged into the ash were not; you would grab one and it would dislodge and roll down the mountain, causing trouble for those below. When there was a space with no rocks, you would have to sprint up to grab the next rock, for unless you sprinted and pushed your body against the ash, you would fall backwards. Falling backwards was scary; there was nothing to stop you from rolling back down the mountain.

About ¾ of the way up we became enveloped in gusty clouds. Visibility was only 10 feet and the wind was blowing at about 35 mph. We continued to climb blindly, one hand over the other, not knowing if rocks up above were falling or how much farther it was to the summit. This was the scariest, most intense part of climbing.

After about 2 hours of climbing, we finally made it to the summit.

I was pretty happy.

Here at the summit, the wind was even stronger and it was hard to stand up without being knocked off your feet. I laid on my stomach and crawled to the edge of the volcanic crater and looked inside. Unfortunately because of the clouds, I could not see the lake at the bottom of the crater; I only saw a giant gaping hole.

After eating a sandwich, we started our descent down the mountain. This was almost scarier than climbing up. Ironically, we found that the safest, best way of getting down was by way of the steep mountain face we originally avoided. Others practically ran down part of the way (not as stupid as an idea as it sounds); I, however, found that the safest way down was on my butt. I almost scooted down the entire mountain.

At the bottom of the mountain, I celebrated. I had climbed Mt. Doom and had done probably the mentally physically hardest thing I had ever done…if that makes sense.

We finished the crossing, choosing to climb the other volcano that is not a part of the trail, Mt. Tongariro, as well. As we came off the trail to meet Laura, we both almost collapsed in mental and physical exhaustion. 

But it was a sweet exhaustion. An exhaustion that said, “Damn. That was awesome.”

The next day, we drove around the park and hiked a few less epic trails. :) We also visited a few Lord of the Rings location sites, much to my happy amusement.

The Black Gates of Mordor were here

 Mt. Ruapehu

 Mt. Doom in the distance

Stream that Gollum played in after catching a fish

This was the New Zealand I traveled thousands of miles for. Paihia is great, but it’s…..well….it’s not snow capped mountains. It’s not wide open plains of waving grass. It’s not bubbling streams and crashing waterfalls.

I can’t WAIT to start traveling.

My First Car, and No Dads to Inspect It

The search is somehow over even before it seemed to begin; Jen and I now each possess one fifth of a navy blue ‘86 Toyota Corona. It’s older than us, but I daresay Jen and I have each separately traversed more miles than this baby: it’s only at 190,000 km. That’s kilometers. It has a giant boot, it’s an automatic (a rare thing here), and it does not appear to even have a “cam belt,” let alone need one replaced. And it’s ours.

We bought it for $1500 (cash), but since the guys will have it until October, and Jen and I are peacing out in April, we just paid $200 each. Jamie, Lewis, and their friend Steven, who arrives from Scotland tomorrow, picked up the rest.

This car used to belong to a hairdresser/bar manager named Shirley who works with the guys at the hotel; apparently she planned on passing it down to her daughter, but her daughter turned it down upon discovering that it lacks a CD player, so Shirley offered it to us. She’s a friend of theirs at work. She came over and cut Lewis’s hair and mine by the washing machine a couple weeks ago. Kelly at the Swiss told us that she’s never seen Shirley’s husband sober and she’s not sure she’d buy his car, but, it has a brand new Warrant of Fitness, the shocks did not appear to wobble, and all of our packs fit in the back at the same time. Sold.

Jen and I were a little flustered by how quickly the process went. “Yeah, we’ll take it,” Jamie said casually, after we’d done a ten-minute inspection, and Shirley said, “Cool, just pay me at work,” and Jen and I were going, “Wait, wait! Shouldn’t we take it to a shop for a second opinion? Check its owner history? Look up its value in a blue book? Shouldn’t we get one of our dads over here to look at it?”

Our dads, unfortunately, are a little bit far away, so we have no choice but to man up and accept that, for $200, we’ll take what’s there. After all, it only needs to last six weeks.

How to Buy a Car

Liz here:

We leave Paihia and begin our 'real' traveling February 18th (or thereabouts.) With that in mind, we need a vehicle. Buying a used one, and selling it again before we leave, is the most economical and practical option; hitch-hiking is cheap but a wee bit sketchy and a lot bit time consuming, and bus tickets or renting camper vans adds up very very quickly. New Zealand is rife with used cars for sale, and finding the one that's right for us is the next mission.

The problem is, there will be five of us, sharing a car for six weeks. This cannot be a car that is going to make us all hate each other by the end of the trip. Assuming such a car exists.

For awhile, we've been sort of asking around and keeping an eye out for vehicles with signs in the windows, with no luck. Then, the other night at work, a car fell into my lap. Manny's friend May, an American from California, stopped in to say hi to him. She and I got chatting, and after explaining that she's leaving NZ for Australia in a few days, she asked me, "Hey, you don't want to buy a car by any chance, do you?" "Yes!" I practically screamed. "Yes, I do!"

The next day, then, by appointment, she showed up at our flat with another American friend, as well as the car - a 1997 white Toyota station wagon with 270,000 km on it. The idea was that I would take a look at it and make sure it was in good shape. Ha! Very funny, eh? This thought was similar to the idea, back in October, of me teaching someone how to play American football, except that I know even less about engines than quarterbacks. But Jen was driving back from their mountain, and Jamie and Lewis were on a field trip in KeriKeri with a work friend, so the task was left to me.

Luckily, Alex gave me a checklist over the phone, so, armed with this, I looked over the car. The first few things I got through easily enough: "When did you buy it? How many k's does it have on it? When does the registration expire?" When it came to checking the coolant or the shocks, however, we had a bit more trouble. May, a typically affable and cheerful Californian, knows about as much about cars as I do, it turns out. We spent several minutes looking for the coolant container under the hood together before finding it. She pressed down on the hood over the tires and we watched the car bounce back up. "That looks okay, right?" I asked. "Sure," she shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea."

It was a little bit sad.

I did discover, however, due to a faded label near the engine, that the cam belt had not been changed since 120,000 km, in late 2002. Neither May or I have the faintest idea what a cam belt does, but everyone I talked to said they need to be changed every 100,000 km - and replacing one costs at least $500. May said she couldn't lower her asking price ($2200), and so we regretfully turned down the car, after a lot of agony on my part.

I mostly thought we should buy the car because May was just so nice. And that, actually, not the many shortcomings in my automobile knowledge, is why I probably should not be put in charge of the new car purchase.

Take That, Australia: We Can Flood, Too!

Liz here:

Friday Night, 11:54 pm:
It’s been rainy a lot lately, but there hasn’t been anything quite as bad as today. When I woke up this morning, it was raining: a thick, heavy rain that coated the streets and pavements. When I walked into town at noon, it was raining, and I sat in the library writing soaking wet. When I walked home at two it was raining. When I walked into work at four it was raining. All through work it rained; people sat inside, with their candles lit, clustered together around placemats and garlicky seafood, smelling like wet dog. After work, when I went next door for a pint with my coworkers, it was raining. And at midnight, when I took a cab home, it was STILL RAINING.

When I say “raining,” I do not mean a piddly little drizzle. I mean a full-out torrential downpour - the kind that normally, unable to sustain itself, ends after a few minutes. This was a full-out torrential downpour that lasted nearly 24 hours.

The restaurant next door to us flooded; they were out with sandbags, trying to prevent the inevitable. Our side shed was under several inches of water. The streets were alive with fire trucks, equipped with long black hoses, pumping out the roads and gutters. Everyone’s yard has become a swimming pool. The ditches are full.

I’m sitting on the couch now, typing, and I can hear the rain beating down on the roof.

Tomorrow they predict sunshine, which I find almost difficult to imagine. But work was fun, exciting. For a night, the inside of the Swiss Café became a warm and bustling refuge, inhabited by a lot of people united, if only it was just because none of us wanted to go outside.

Saturday, 2:35 pm:

Talk about serious flooding. I knew it was bad last night; the fire trucks with their hoses were sign enough of that, let alone Jamie and Lewis’s boss from the hotel spending the night on our couch because the roads back to his house in Kerikeri were blocked and flooded.

But today the roads are still closed. Paihia is full of stranded travelers who can’t drive away to Auckland. Jen, on her drive home from Mt. Doom, is trapped on the other side of a major road that is closed because it is covered in over ONE METER of water. These roads run along the beach, and there is no break between ocean and road. It’s all one big body of water today, baby. I feel like I’m witnessing, right here in Paihia, what could happen if glaciers keep melting and sea levels rise. It’s bad news.

Not to mention the ocean is a sickly yellow brown color today. Except for the jet skis dotting its surface, it looks like a big mud flat. There is no resemblance to water. Mudslides and rivers running over their banks across the region did an end to that blissfully blue water we normally enjoy.

All of that said, it’s kind of an exciting thing to experience. You know me. I love it when things get a little topsy-turvy.

Mount Doom

Jen here:

The past few weeks have been pretty quiet, pretty....boring? Boring is maybe a bad word to use, but... there you go. It's been raining A LOT (pretty much every day) which means:
a.) Swiss Cafe is less busy. I have NO problems with this. :)
b.) our flat has developed this horrible musty smell due to our clothes and shoes never being 100% dry (we don't have a dryer - only a clothesline).
c.) we've become good friends of the tiny movie rental store in Paihia.

BUT! I AM SO EXCITED BECAUSE:

I am going to climb Mount Doom.

Yes.

That is right.

Mount Doom.

Unfortunately, we're not actually in LOTR, and the hike is going to be a lot less epic because Mt. Nagauruhoe (the real name of the mountain) is not controlled by the evil Sauron, we didn't have to cross the desolate Mordor in order to get there, and we're not going to have to throw the one ring into the lava at the summit. [Sigh.] 

STILL! It's going to be super cool and I am so pumped. Unfortunately, my housemates cannot go. Liz and I can't take the same days off of work (plus climbing Mt. Doom really wasn't on her "to do" list in New Zealand :) ), and our flatmates Jamie and Lewis took one look at a picture of the mountain and said, well, in their nice Scottish way, that I could just go away.

One way to access the mountain is by hiking the Tongariro Crossing, which is rated the best day walk in New Zealand. So we're going to get up at about 5:00 am, start the crossing, break off the track, climb Mt. Doom, and go back to finish the crossing. Whew!

I'll let you all know how it goes.

And if I see any hobbits.

Rainy January

This has been a month of high winds and lots of rain. A few days ago there were two tropical cyclones, or something like that, out at sea, and they met, and there was this cool "Perfect Storm" thing which meant winds of 100-150 kph here in Paihia and torrential rains. It was very exciting, and nearly dead at the Swiss Cafe. This was good, because our manager and the owner, Kelly, took off for two days and left Jen and I in charge, so with two very quiet days it was quite easy for us.

Speaking of the Swiss Cafe, Jen and I got raises! We now get $13.50 an hour instead of $12.80, which is not too much, but it's something.

We leave to start traveling in three weeks. I am so ready to leave this city. Every other place I've spent a lot of time in (Ferndale, Ann Arbor, Isle Royale, northern California, even Frankfurt) I've grown to love. Familiarity tends to breed affection. But I feel a kind of disgust for Paihia. It's city without a soul. Paihia has its bright, candy-hard exterior, all tricked out for the tourists - but inside there is nothing but a light fluff of under appreciated dishwashers and tour guides: lazy, vacuous backpackers and hidden, disvalued Maoris. I will not miss this place. I'll miss the Swiss Cafe; I'll miss Centabay; I'll miss our little flat, and our friends we've made here. But I can't even look at the ocean without seeing one of the enormous, gaudily-painted tour boats heading out with another load of Europeans.

Pardon this rant - I think the rain is putting me in a cynical mood.

Happy New Year, New Zealand!

On New Year’s Eve, we all had to – you guessed it – work. (I literally cannot remember my last day off. In the past ten days, I’ve worked 101 hours, if you combine the Swiss and cleaning the boat. Reeediculous.)

Jen cleaned the Ipipiri the morning of the 31st, so she worked the most. I spent a shiny hot morning having a coffee with the guys (Dan, Lewis, and Jamie – they had Tiger beer; yes it was one pm, but it was a holiday. I had the coffee. A flat white, one sugar.) We had bagels and enchilada’s at Jul’z Café, which we recently discovered, and which caters to our budget (miniscule.) And then at two or three pm, we all buggered off to work, with the exception of Dan, who has been camped out on the couch for over a week now and has nothing to do.

Right, so, Jen and I went off to the Swiss Café and proceeded to spend the next ten and a half hours there. We had a “party” for New Year’s, which meant a singer out on the deck – “Charlotte,” merrily rolling through covers. Every person there spent $78 for breads, a starter, a main, and a dessert; plus more for drinks, which there were plenty of. It was sort of the same situation as Christmas Day, except every table was booked, and people didn’t leave, so after nine pm we didn’t really have any new tables. People just settled in, ordered drinks, and waited for midnight.

At 11:55 pm, we all quit what we were doing and everyone conglomerated along the edge of the deck, staff and patrons alike. Across the street, the beach was thronged with people. The streets were writhing. (This is a brand new Paihia, and it started that night; it takes ages to cross the street now, for example.) Jen and I snagged a couple of Steinlagers out of the fridge. And out we went to join the crowd.

At midnight, everyone was kissing. Jen and I kissed each other, hugged, and went along to kiss everyone’s cheeks: Kelly, our boss; Julian and Stefan, the German boys; Mamu and Stefanie, the Argentian ‘bus girls’; Peini, the chef, and Peini’s boisterous gay friend who we met pretty much as we kissed him. And fireworks exploded over the bay. The air took on that acrid smell of explosives, and hundreds and hundreds of people lined the water, staring up into the sky. We’d already been at work nine hours, but in that moment I felt deliciously energetic and human.

A party of Maoris dressed as zombie wedding guests, with elaborate long gowns and tuxedos and fake blood on their faces wandered by, playing up the crowds. Kids across the street ran about with sparklers. Backpackers galore made out under the fireworks. The sky flashed blue – red – gold – white – and we all watched, loudly, awake for these first moments of a brand new year.

After the fireworks it was back to work - cleaning up – but a lot of people left half empty bottles of champagne and chardonnay and whatnot, so we drank sparkly glasses as we cleaned.

Last year on New Year’s Eve, Jen and I were lying in a frost-coated tent in the middle of the Adirondacks in sleeping bags. Sandwiched between Ty Cialek and my brother, we set an alarm and woke up at twelve and blearily muttered “Happy New Year” and fell back asleep, shivering. We woke up to icy mountains and black pine trees under their own sweaters of snow, and strapped on our snowshoes. This year it was nearly 100 degrees warmer, and we stood on a New Zealand beach in sandals and ponytails, among several hundred travelers.

Last year, if asked where I'd be in a year's time, I would not have predicted New Zealand. It’s impossible to say, really, what the case will be on December 31st, 2011. And that’s what makes life so exciting.