I survived Lake Taupo

I arrived in Taupo two days ago today I left there and moved to a really remote hostel in the middle of nowhere... aka River Valley. It's a pretty cool place, they have a river right outside and I just got done swimming in that. On our way here our busdriver (His name is Bods) took us to a waterfall and I umm... jumped off it into the rapids!! ahahhaa so very cool.

I had the most insane time In Taupo, Google Lake Taupo and you'll see where I'm at. It was absolutely breathtaking there. I haven't written because I wasn't really around at the hostel. On my first day I went out around the town (very small place) took some photos and just read by the side of the lake. My second day I decided to wake up at 5:30am and go on a "trek" called the Tongiraro Crossing (pronounced tong-i-raro) yeah, you know Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings? Yeah, I hiked the freakin mountain next to it. The weather was too harsh to get up Mt. Doom. The hike was 18.5km and took me from 7:30am to 2:30pm. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my entire life. It beat any lacrosse practice or game I've ever had and it totally beat out shoveling 5 tons of stone for my father this summer in Delaware. There is this part called Hell's Gate and I swear Satan himself was sitting at the top laughing his ass off at me. Hell's Gate is all the stones that Froto, Sam, and Gullum (spelling?) have to climb up in Lord of the Rings. I was breathing so hard and I thought I was going to fall over. The whole time i was climbing random thoughts kept popping into my head, for instance, about 3-4 summers ago i was at my friend Christine's house and there was a flip-flop on her stairs and I was like oh, I should move that before someone trips over it... But I ended up just leaving it there. And what do you know, Christine comes down the stairs, trips on it and twists her ankle... so yeah, random thoughts like that kept coming and going, i just kept thinking of all these funny things to keep my going. And I'd say to myself well shit, if freakin Sam can carry Froto up this thing, I can get up it myself. My main goal was to stick it out with all the guys because I didn't want to hike it by myself. So there were 3 of us, then we picked up two other guys along the way. I thought Austria was the most beautiful place I have ever been... I think it took a backseat to this place. I got so many pictures. So anyway, we ended the hike an hour ahead of time which was awesome... we laid around for an hour waiting for the bus to pick us up.

So after my 18.5km trek I decided to umm... go jump out of an airplane... SORRY MOM! Talk about an action-packed day!! I jumped 15,000 feet with Roy (he owns the place... he's been jumping for 25 years) So I jumped out over Lake Taupo and the sky was so clear that I could see from coast to coast (or something like that) Lake Taupo is so big that it could fit Singapore in it! I had a pretty crazy day to say the least. I got a video and pics of me jumping, I can't wait to watch it! Afterwards I went out to dinner with two guys that I did the trek with and Sarah the English girl (who i am getting better at understanding, Margie you were right) then we all went out and drank alot of beer... I think it's pretty necessary after a day like that. Bods our driver is this crazy guy and he was out with us too. We didn't get in until like 3am. I almost pulled an all-nighter.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Wellington to stay with my mom's friend Mike and his wife. I talked to him today and I am pretty excited to get out of a hostel for a few days and sleep in a house... i forget what it's like to shower without shoes on! The south island will be much slower, I am going to spend about a month there, rock on. alright I gotta jet, the shrimp is on the barbie (seriously! all we do is BBQ here!!) talk later!

NZ time: tuesday jan 23rd 2007 6:30pm
Philly time: tuesday jan 23rd 2007 12:30am