On Wednesday morning, the miserable weather still hadn't subsided, so we woke to rain and gale force winds. Excellent. At least we had the luxury of the bus to get us from Taupo to Waitomo - our first scheduled stop of the day. Waitomo is home to the famous Glowworm Caves, known for its population of glowworms which are found exclusively in New Zealand and around the size of an average mosquito and in the dark they glow a bright green colour. The Waitomo Cave system is over 30 million years old.

The main attraction at the caves is black water rafting, which is a tubing adventure involving climbing, black water tubing, leaping and floating through the cave. We did the Black Labyrinth Tour, which lasted for three hours, most of that floating serenely down an underground river, while we got to enjoy the glow worm show on the limestone walls and ceilings up above. It reminded we of staring up at the Milky Way - millions of tiny specks of light flickering above.

Eventually we emerged, and the weather had picked up nicely compared to a few hours earlier, and after a decent shower, change of clothes and a coffee, it was back to the bus and onto the National Park. En route to the Park, we passed through Te Kuiti, apparently the sheep shearing capital of the world - a rather interesting title for a town. Only in New Zealand I guess. From there we passed through King Country farmland and eventually arrived at the World Heritage Tongariro National Park, New Zealand's first national park created in 1887. We stopped at the visitors centre at Whakapapa - one of the mountain's two commercial skifields. Whakapapa has a bit of comedy value to it's name, with the Wh pronounced as an F, so phonetically it makes for an interesting name.

There we enquired about the Tongariro Crossing - rated as one of the best one day hikes in New Zealand, but a combination of heavy snow, really poor visibility and gusting winds made the Crossing fairly inaccessibility, so decided to give that one a miss. It was really unfortunate, especially as I had planned the National Park accommodation around the hike. Oh well, another time I guess.

After leaving Whakapapa, we stopped at the Tawhai Falls, the scene of Gollum's pool in the Lord of the Rings series. Obviously looked massively different to the CGI enhanced version in the movie, but we were there, standing at the base of his pool. From there, we also had a good view over to Mt Ruapehu, which formed the fiery Mt Doom in the movie. So plenty of LOTR trivia around us.

After a few photos there, we headed onto National Park, a small town on the central plateau, and borders the Tongariro National Park. And by small town, it's no exaggeration - with just 4 corners in walking distance to each other, and a pub on each of those corners, there wasn't much else to see or do there.

After checking in to the YHA, we headed over the road to one of the four pubs - the Snapps Bar. It was the Scotland against Georgia game, so not a particularly large game, but Freya was all for it, and I guess being Scottish was the reason for it. We decided on dinner at the pub, while enjoying watching Scotland win by 15 points to 6, so not too bad a result. After a couple of Export Golds there, we headed back to the hostel, a whole 2 minutes walk. Got to love small towns.

Yesterday morning, after a bit of a sleep in, we woke up to miserable weather outside, I guess it was expected from the predicted forecast up in Whakapapa village back on Wednesday afternoon. So instead of the day being spent on the Tongariro Crossing, we settled on the climbing wall in the hostel instead. There were over 40 different climbing routes, not bad at all from a hostel climbing wall. I had done some bouldering before, but never any belaying, so that made for something new and interesting.

Later in the attention, we got a call from the girls, Freya and Lizzie, who had had a bit of an issue with their landlord and packed their bags and left. So we went to give them a hand, then stopped by the local police station while they tried sorting whatever it was out. Haig and I found it way easier chilling outside and not getting involved. After what seemed like forever, we headed back to the hostel, dropped the bags then over the road for a chill out beer.

Later on, they were showing the Russia vs USA game, with final score being 13 - 6 to USA, not really the highlight of the tournament, but still an excuse to watch a game. We then landed up staying later than expected, to the point we even had a lock in until about 3 the next morning when we decided to call it a night and grab some warmed up pasta back at the hostel, courtesy of Anita and Regula.

This morning, with us both feeling rather rough, we checked out and headed down the road to grab a breakfast from the little cafe by the petrol station. After both of us were well fed and watered, we made our way to the other side of town (a 10 minute walk only) and now we stand and wait for our Intercity bus to arrive to take us down to Wellington for a couple of nights down there again.