I'm sorry my blog is late this week, but it was well worth it.
Friday I went to the kiddos Assembly because Hazel's class was performing. She was in the front row and did so well singing her songs with everyone. She's an absolute delight (: As I mentioned last week, I learned the National Anthem and it was way cool to sing it with everyone. I feel like I'm belonging here more and more.
Friday night, we took a 4 1/2 hour road trip to Tongariro and stayed in a hostel so that we could be up bright and early Saturday morning to hike the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It's also the crossing where they filmed the majority of Sam and Frodo's journey into Mordor. One of the active Volcanos there, Mount Ngauruhoe, was actually staged as Mount Doom in the movies. Way Cool. So I obviously brought my replica of the One Ring with me for the journey. Super nerdy, but completely worth it.
Aside from it being famous for LOTR's, its just an amazing adventure. It's a 19.4 Kilometer hike up, around, and down an active volcanic summit and it is the most amazing thing I have ever done. Also the most exhausting.
The hike starts out just innocent and beautiful on a windy path through the mountains, then you walk up to this sign that literally warns you that you're about to get your ass kicked, and maybe you should consider turning back. After you convince yourself you can do it, you walk/climb up about a million stairs and stretches of rock. At the end you're practically clawing up the side of this mountain. Just kidding, I'm being dramatic. It was a lot of cardio though. When you reach the top of the summit its just this beautiful view stretched out of Mountains and landscape and Sky all blended together like a beautiful painting. Then the crazy shit starts and you have to hike back down the summit and that was almost as hard as climbing up, because there is no staircase down. Its spongy, volcanic rock matter and you literally slip and slide on this 40 foot stretch... Honestly, one big slide and you would literally plummet off the side of the summit and fall to your death. It's crazy. But then you reach the Emerald pools and honestly my pictures don't do them justice. They are breathtaking and make the entire trip worth it. After that, theres the blue lake which is a crystal calm stretch of water amongst mountains. When I saw it from the top of the Summit, I thought to myself that if theres a heaven, that has to be what it looks like. Breathtaking.
The hike down was interesting, we took another little trip up through some mist and then across a landscape of cloud, you could've lost someone in it, thats how thick and wet it was. After it cleared and we started the journey down the Summit, the landscape was beautiful and the windy path down the mountain and through the woods was pretty cool, but once you've done 12 miles of hiking up a volcano, the car park is also a really wonderful sight, haha.
I'm going to stop talking and just let you guys check out the pictures because they're really fantastic.
I hope everyone had a marvelous week/weekend! I love you all!
Sidni
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