Mt Doom!

Waking up early after our last night in Rotorua (which featured Joe singing Danish drinking songs with some Danes we found, again), we head South to Mordor (Taupo region) in order to brave the elements and ascend Mt Doom (as made famous by the Lord of the Rings trilogy).

So, the mountain isn’t actually named Mt. Doom (much to my dismay, it’s named Ngauruhoe), but we’ll still call it that for the sake of cinematics.  At about noon we pull into the parking lot for the trailhead, but right as we’re leaving we ask a park ranger how to get to the mountain, and she just says it’s too late so we shouldn’t do it. Never ones to be set astray from a magnificent challenge, Joe and I find the trail head and set off for ourselves.

Immediately I begin to recognize scenery from the LOTR trilogy, and when Mt Doom, eye at it’s center and all, gets into sight, I am struck by just how awesome this whole scenery is.

The hike there is quite difficult, and Joe and I get sunburned as all hell on the way up (the UV rays are much more intense here, I believe due to a hole in the ozone layer around Australia). However, needless to say, the sights at the top are absolutely breathtaking. Imagine a completely 360 view from atop a massive volcanic mountain with nothing in view but two brilliantly blue crater lakes, a couple other active volcanoes, and absolutely no civilization - no roads, no cars, no planes.

Heading down to the car we decide to get off the trail for a bit to check out a waterfall nearby. This proved to be one of the highlights of the trip when Joe just hopped right under it and took his little shower for the day.  I was a bit more timid, but got under as well.  The water wasn’t too cold, not too painful coming down, and refreshing as all hell.

We then proceed to hit the road down South to Wellington (Joe driving for the first time - he did very well), and stop with about 2 hours left to make dinner (bean sandwiches, obviously) and sleep on the side of the road, blown away by the day behind us, and quite excited for the city ahead of us.