But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Leaving the Bay of Plenty on Saturday
morning, I had a front row seat through the kiwi orchards of Te Puke,
the sulphur-smelling hot pools of Rotorua, the Whakarewarewa Forest
Park (when you're attempting to pronounce these Maori names, “wh”
sounds like “f”), climbing steadily up the Plateau, through the
lakeside city of Taupo. All along the road, with two lanes and sharp
turns, there are safety signs, with anthropomorphic kiwifruits
boinking into trees – which is cute, until you think about what the
fruit is representing. A few short hours later we made it to Turangi,
where we stopped for a coffee and some buns. The town itself is
small, so it didn't take long to find the A-Plus Backpackers Hostel,
where I jumped out of one caravan and moved to another.
“Now Ryan,” Jane said, giving me a
patented Grandmother hug, “be careful, have fun, and don't do
anything stupid.”
And with that, I'm
off again.
I use the term “shanty town” in the
most endearing way possible when I talk about Turangi. It's small,
spread out, a little bit dishevelled, but has the Tongariro River
bordering it on one side, and the peaks of the slowly ascending
mountain range on another. A-Plus Lodge is, without doubt, the
shanty. I guess you'd call it
open-concept, with a field for tents occupying one corner, a
lounge/kitchen/reception area that has a few walls but is open to the
parking lot and the garage, and the whole thing is surrounded by a
fence where the perpetual backpackers have painted pictures and
poetry. It felt like I stepped into a hippie commune, a revolving
door of people out searching for themselves where the real world
ceases to exist.
Again, I say it in the most endearing way possible. Ian, the owner, lives here with his family – his barefooted kids might not have all the luxury of Eloise, but with the steady flow of people coming through this weird little microcosm, I bet they have a lot more stories and adventures.
One last thing
about the A-Plus Lodge – I don't usually divulge any of my heinous
hostel bathroom stories. I've got a few, probably enough for another
blog, which I should really think about doing someday – this one,
though, needs to be shared right now. So I get there, get
semi-settled, and plan to go pick up some groceries with the German
girl who's in the same room. I just would duck to the washroom first.
The
toilet has a single flush rod on it, extending from the front of the
tank and able to revolve in a complete circle. I turn it around a few
times, and nothing really happens. I eventually hit on the right
spot, and a dribble of water comes out. Now, I've worked at a kids
summer camp for most of my teenage life, where you either learn how
toilets work or you land yourself in deep trouble. I took the lid off
the tank, and saw that something was very, very wrong
with this setup.
But, I had a weird
arsenal of tools at my disposal. A sippy cup was floating in the
tank, and there was a little garbage can (the one piece of good luck
I had in this whole misadventure was that this was empty). So,
through trial and error, I devised a system where I'd fill the sippy
cup from the tank, empty it into the garbage can, and then when I had
enough water to create a suction flow, I'd dump it into the toilet
bowl.
About 17 minutes
later I came back, one arm dripping toilet tank water up to the
elbow, and pretended to pass it off like nothing happened. Things
improved after that.
People who come to
Turangi generally come to hike (“tramp” in New Zealand) or fish
on the river, so even though the hostel was nearly empty this
weekend, the shuttle bus going to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing was
packed. It only takes about half an hour to reach the car park, at
the end of Mangatepopo Road. There are a number of tracks that run
through this area, going as far as the ski fields along Ruapehu; the
main one that people do in a day is the Alpine Crossing, which starts
here and ends at another car park near Lake Rotarira, some 16 km
away. It takes the full day, and is widely touted as the best
full-day tramp in New Zealand, and one of the best in the world.
We couldn't do
that, because there's been some volcanic activity on Tongariro (one
of the three main peaks in the area, the other two being Ngauruhoe
and Ruapehu, all in a neat little line), but there was an option B;
rather than just reach a certain point and turn back around, we could
hook into the Great Northern Circuit which wraps around the other end
of Ngauruhoe. It would take a little while (the Department of
Conservation runs a bunch of self-contained tramping huts throughout
New Zealand, where hikers can stay for the night – there were two
along this route), but it wasn't too crazy, right?
Roosters were literally crowing when we left Turangi around 7:00, dressing in layers to fight off the early morning chill that is inevitable at this kind of altitude. Other buses were pulling into the car park when we arrived, but the clusters slowly spread out as we got further along. It wasn't too long before I needed to strip my layers, shoving a jacket, pants, and thermal undershirts in my [almost too small] day pack and welcoming the sun on my bare legs and arms.
I also, at this point, have to admit to being wrong, something that I hate doing. Before I came to New Zealand, my Dad told me to get a wide-brimmed hat. To which radically uncool suggestion I rolled my eyes. Stewart told me the same thing, except with more gusto – he drove me to the store, and basically said that I wasn't allowed to go outside if I didn't buy this hat. Even though there's a hole in the ozone right above New Zealand, and even though this country has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, I still felt stupid – until I put it on and felt my stinging neck sing praises. I don't apologize for being stubborn, but I'll admit to being wrong, I guess.
So,
the Tongariro Crossing. To say it's unlike anything I've ever seen
before is fairly obvious, since this is such a world onto itself, but
at the same time it's something that needs to be said and believed.
The trek begins with sparse vegetation, in the shadow of these
towering mountains. Slowly, you start climbing along weaving stairs,
the sun persisting and your surroundings getting drier and rockier.
It's an unreal volcanic area, a cross between a desert and the moon.
I won't even stop myself from saying it looked like Mordor, because
it was Mordor, with
the perfectly shaped cone of the volcanic Mt. Ngauruhoe doubling as
Mt. Doom in the film trilogy.
So obviously I had
to climb that.
The only problem
with climbing Mt. Doom is that there is no trail going up in, only a
steep slope sticking 2287 m into the air. Parts of it were easier to
get footing, but most parts were just banks of sand and volcanic scoria (I'm pretty sure the only way you can say that in your head is
to the tune of “Disturbia”), where you had to pick a zig-zag
pattern out to have any chance of making any headway. In the heat and
the struggle, my chest was near ready to burst – not that it was
easy for Frodo or anything. At least I had sunscreen, a hat, and
water.
On the bus, I meet a Korean dude, Noah, who joined me for this leg of the journey, which was a lot better than scaling a volcano on your own. Closer to the top, we joined in with a group from Canada, and about 2 hours after starting our ascent off the beaten trail, we reach the summit. There were two main peaks at the top – we checked out the smaller of the two first, which gave a wicked view of Mt. Tongariro below us, as well as further out, to the Blue Lake and Lake Rotoaira. There was also a vent up here, spewing steam, which fogged up your glasses as soon as you got anywhere near it.
The crater though, that took the cake. Probably a kilometre in diameter and going down in a steep, jagged bowl that makes Mt. Eden look like a child's broken toy, this was what it felt to stand on top of a volcano.
We had our lunch up here, and before I left, I had to do something that countless weirdos before me have probably done.
What goes up must
come down – but that doesn't mean it was easy. All the things that
were against us going up (the steep slope, the loose rocks) were just
as difficult going back down, if not more so. Even zig-zagging wasn't
always possible, so sometimes you had to get down low and let
yourself slide, being incredibly careful that you didn't dislodge too
many large rocks in the process, because Mr. Wilcott taught me enough
about physics to know that if a rock the size of your head starts
tumbling down a 45 degree slope, it's not just going to stop. Not
unless it transfers that momentum to something else – in this case,
someone creeping along just like you.
When we finally
made it to solid ground, we looked back on the monstrosity we had
just climbed and couldn't really believe it. I felt like I deserved a
pat on the back for conquering the mountain – if I only knew what
was still ahead of us in this desert.
Rejoining the trail
we left earlier, we continued, veering towards Tongariro. After
another deceptively steep, sandy incline (they never look as
daunting or as far from the bottom as they actually are – I thought
I learned that once upon a time, on a beach a long way from here), we
came to the Red Crater, aptly named. It's a massive gouge in the
earth, blood red, and beyond that the Emerald Lakes, and a trail
stretching into nothingness. It was here that most sensible people
were turning back – and here that we had to make a decision.
Had I been alone,
the pure isolation of the road ahead would have driven me insane, and
I never would have been able to attempt it. Hell, if I'd really known
how far it was, I might have reconsidered even if I had an army with
me. But as it was, a little voice from somewhere in the guts of my
being called out to me: “There very well may come a day that you
need this – when you need to know that you were capable of doing
this. Go.”
Another voice,
probably the same one that was behind chucking a plastic ring into
the crater of Ngauruhoe, remembered that line from The Fellowship
of the Ring, where the b'ys are hanging out in
Lotthlorien and, as they're leaving this one glade, we find out that Aragorn “came there never again as a living man.” That
always stuck out for me because I found that definite closure a bit
sad – how many places have I been, people I've met, that I'm never
going to see again? Would I have done things differently if I'd
known? You can drive yourself nuts dwelling on what could have been,
and as I stood at the sign warning day hikers to turn around, bone
tired, I knew that if I didn't continue, that road would, for better
or for worse, forever remain the one not taken.
Along the way, we
went through arid deserts drier than anything I've ever seen, places
where you can't imagine life ever existing, the only noise in the
still air the buzz of beetles. I saw long stretches of emptiness
literally vaster than anything I've ever seen before, enclosed by
stone giants and unending at the same time. A kind of beauty so harsh
and unforgiving that you feel inspired and terrified and that there's
no point in trying to sort out your emotions.
At the Oturere Hut (spacious, with rows of bunk beds, a cabin-style kitchen, and outhouses) we refilled our water bottles from a spring, and braced ourselves for the 3-hour jaunt to the next hut, the Waihohonu Hut, over steep ridges, through an out-of-place forest, and a whole lot more rocks and sand and sun. Even when we made it, we were still an hour and a half from the road, of course called the Desert Road. When you can see as far as we could, it's difficult to imagine distances that long. Conversation that had earlier been centred around cross-culture language barriers and lifestyles (and learning what in the hell “Gangnam Style” is about) were abated somewhere around kilometre 18 as extreme fatigue cut in. With every thudding footstep on the desolate path (when there was a path – sometimes it was just long stretches with the occasional marker to let you know you're going the right way), I just kept thinking, “Oh crap. Is this what Jane would call stupid? Where are we?!”
You know how, in
cartoons, characters sometimes transform into hot dogs when they're
with someone who's starving? I walked 25 km in the New Zealand desert
with a 5'4” bottle of Aquafina who spoke broken English.
Recognizing this, I opted for the much healthier musing on whether or
not I could drink my sunscreen.
The road was a
beautiful asphalt beacon, 11 hours after we left the car park. Of
course, we were still a ways from Turangi. At our hostel the day
before, we had been told up front that Ian would come pick us up if
we needed it – but that hitchiking was pretty legit in this part of
the world.
Don't. Do. Anything. Stupid.
A few things. I
never would have hitchiked in the dark, and certainly not alone. But
it was only 7:30 by now, with plenty of daylight left, so I figured
we'd humour this ludicrous idea and just ring the hostel after half
an hour and get saved. There were long periods of emptiness (did I
mention this was the Desert Road?), then zooming vehicles that never
so much as slowed down, until an agriculture worker in a company
truck pulled over.
“I'm only going
to Turangi – I'll take you that far if you promise not to knife me
or rob me!”
“Sounds good,”
I said, plunking down in the backseat and feeling the weight of the
world lifted off my shoulders, hoping the drive would take all night
so I wouldn't need to move any time soon. “Only if you'll promise
the same thing.”
It was twilight by
the time we made it back to Turngi, with the roosters crowing again
at the end of a very long day. Over supper, an American couple came
(she was from Baltimore and, yes, they have a love-hate relationship
with The Wire) and convinced Ian to drive them up to the
Tokaanu Thermal Walk, a
public walkway alongside bubbling mudpools and smoking vents. I was
more exhausted than I've been in a long time, but I went along anyway
– my daytrip ended watching the steam of a hot pool rise beneath a
full moon, a clear sky above.
“Now, where's the
Northern Star?” Ian joked, after pointing out the Southern Cross on
the horizon.
“A long ways
away,” I said, looking in that direction even though I knew it was
far below the horizon. A very long way away – but sometimes,
going that extra distance ends up making all the difference in the
world.
Cheers,
rb
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