This page is a continuation of our trip to New Zealand, you can see the rest of the trip report here:
New Zealand YogaSlackers TAO tour 2016 South Island part 1
New Zealand YogaSlackers TAO tour 2016 South Island part 2
We got to Wellington on the Ferry Jan 31, 2016 in the evening and we went to visit Jackie who was in charge of housing when Sam was in NZ. She also was the one who first made Sam's iconic dreadlocks. The next day was another internet/laundry etc. catch up day. I also borrowed some clippers and removed a lot of hair and a month of beard. Since things were getting hotter as we moved north, this was greatly appreciated.
Before we left the Wellington area we went to the Adrenalin Forest and did the ropes course there. They had pretty clever clips that would only clip on to the steel cables (with magnetic sensors) and communicated between them so you couldn't unclip both of them except at the end of each course where a free ended cable let you do that. Most of us went through the entire course. It was pretty fun although some of the obstacles were tiring and got tedious once you figured out how to negotiate them. There were plenty of zip lines (they called them flying foxes) and so on up to about 150 feet in the air (all between huge pine trees). Then we headed N towards Lake Taupo and Wanderlust NZ.
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Setting up the slacklines at Wanderlust was a challenge because the stakes they had were relatively flimsy large tent stakes instead of the usual foot long nails. We were able to get 19 big stakes from the tent rental place and they manufactured some more from rebar. That worked out. The camping area for us wasn't that great as it was small and slopey. I set up under a big tree but then was told to move. I set up on a slightly slopier area to be away from the families with 2 screaming kids.
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Wanderlust was held at the Wairakei Resort. It featured a number of warm pools and spa pools which I took advantage of. It was hot when the sun shone, but we had too much drizzle and rain which made acro on the lawn a lot less attractive. The relatively small size of this event compared to the one held at Squaw Valley in the USA was nice though.
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It was fun to reunite with Sam and Tash who we hadn't seen since Thailand. We taught a number of slackline and slackro classes and did YogaSlacker conditioning every day. We also did some acro conditioning and slackline conditioning. One involved over 40 minutes of 1 minute holds and line exercises. Another day we did 5 minute holds - we didn't do a lot of exercises but 5 minute holds are pretty brutal, especially the kneeling.
We make appearances in this video...
Wanderlust Lake Taupo 2016 video
After Wanderlust we headed back to the south side of Lake Taupo where we planned to hike up part of the Tongariro crossing hike and climb Mt Doom (one of the ones used in the Lord of the Rings movies). We cleverly went to the wrong side and thus started a good bit lower and farther away. We were also hiking against the crowds who do this hike - for a while we did 10 flashlights (clenching a fist and then flicking the fingers straight) for each person we passed - after a few hundred people we abandoned this practice. Raquel set a brutal pace at first - I think we even reduced poor Nalumon to tears at one point (but she soldiered bravely on). After the hut we slowed down to a more reasonable speed as we headed up into the clouds. We crossed a pass to Blue Lake and things cleared up a bit. Then we did some acro photos by the Emerald Lakes and headed up to Red Crater. We caught a brief glimpse of Mt Doom but mostly it was obscured by clouds. In light of the hour, tiredness, and pace we decided to climb Tongariro instead of Mt Doom (real name Ngaurahoe). We were still mostly in the clouds but we had some nice views. On the way down to Emerald Lakes we stopped to take a bunch of pics. The hike down was long, and it got completely dark by the time we got to the hut. Luckily I am wise in the ways of hiking with Sam and Raquel and brought a headlamp and advised Nalumon to bring hers too. We cooked up a variety of quick foods including ramen when we made it back to Donatello before heading to our campsite.
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Following our 11.5 hour hike we slept in a bit but got up when the DOC crew started mowing and chainsawing at our camp. I had a weird swollen muscle clump in my forearm from all the flashlights and holding my camera at the end of the tripod to get overhead pics. We touristed a bit and then headed to Mangaokewa - a climbing area. It had free camping and a stream as well as a two tiered cliff with the upper cliff overhanging enough to allow climbing in the rain. There also seemed to be a lot of birds there. That night after acro conditioning and dinner we set up the projector and watched a movie in Donatello. There was more rain that night (as there had been many nights).
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The climbing here was a lot of fun. First we did a bunch of stuff on the lower tier at the colosseum but then I did some of the upper tier climbs - mostly fun climbing on big holds on steep rock. I finished off the day trying a 27 - The steepest part wasn't bad because it had big holds, then things got a bit tougher before I fell. They were fixed draws though so it was low commitment climbing and I could just lower off where I fell.
We went down to wash off in the river which was barely thigh deep but then we spent some time building a wall to enhance the current. I didn't last long but Sam was engineering for over an hour before some acro conditioning and a big batch of pumpkin squash curry filled us up.
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The next morning melted into the afternoon before we finally finished up a series of tasks and went climbing. Not surprisingly we were all a little tired this day but everyone had a few goes at leading an upper tier climb.
We packed up the next morning and headed to a town for fish and chips and laundry and to start packing before heading through Auckland to Sam and Tash's. There we had a nice dinner and sunset and I washed off a number of things (like my shoes and the tent stakes) that had soil on them. Then I had to pack. ugh. Once I decided to abandon my climbing rope (that was just about done anyway - the last climbing day I had decided one end wasn't fit for leading anymore) it was easier to make the weight limits - my carry on was still overweight, but it didn't look that way anymore.
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Tash's mom gave us (Matt, Kristin, and I) a ride to the airport and the others were leaving other days. I stuffed some of their gear in my bag and brought it up to 23.5 kilos but the airline took it. My ticket to Hawaii did not come with a window seat or movie access or even food. Luckily Matt and Kristin's did, but they couldn't tell that ahead of time so they didn't request food they could eat so I got the stuff that they couldn't - their loss was my gain - otherwise it would have been a pretty lean day. Instead of watching the usual 3 or 4 movies I read a book on my kindle.
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