every adventure has to have a low point

Day seven: National Park.

One of the activities that we were looking most forward to on the trip was the Tongariro Crossing. An epic hike that takes 6-8 hours, the Crossing is weather dependent. Tongariro National Park is a dream for outdoorsy people, but this time of year, the Crossing can be dangerous if you get stuck in bad weather. Unfortunately, it poured buckets all day the only day we were there, so the Crossing was closed. We could have stayed longer in Natty Park to see if better weather would come, but it had already been announced that it would be closed the next day. Even though the hostel was very cool, there was absolutely nothing else to do if the weather was shit. So we had a relaxing day and moved on with the bus.

Speaking of the bus, our second bus was a great disappointment compared to our first bus. There were a few people on the first bus that we found annoying, but for the most part we had some extremely fun partners in crime (both the boozey and the adventuresome types of crime). When we joined the second bus in Rotorua, we knew within five minutes that we were not going to love these people. There was a clutch of Asian girls playing annoying music and singing along loudly. There were a couple of know-it-all Canadians who made jokes about how they wouldn’t hold the fact that we were American against us.

Then there were some other Americans from our first bus who had coincidentally stayed in Rotorua as well. Two of them were a couple, and they were the extremely-in-love-and-unabashed-about-fervent-PDA variety. We later heard a report that they had found the marae situation at Uncle Boy's where all 20 of us slept in the same room ...well...*ahem*... thrilling.

The other two Americans from our first bus were so extremely boring that we felt guilty about the raucous amount of fun we had. They were so quiet that they didn’t even seem to like each other, even though they were roommates back in Auckland. They did very few of the scheduled activities and barely socialized at all. Boooooooring. We had a few laughs with the people we went skydiving with, but damn did we miss that first bus. Add to that the fact that my sore throat had followed usual course and developed into a phlegmy cough and runny nose, and I was in a foul mood about the whole situation. Get me to Wellington so I can get off of this sucky inferior bus.

We watched a little tv, split an hour of expensive internet time, shared a delicious platter of vegetables and fries for dinner, and called it a night. We each popped a melatonin and slept like logs, eager to wake up refreshed and ready for the next day. I'm still doing research to try and find out why melatonin is easily available over-the-counter in the states but only available by prescription in most other countries, including New Zealand. Bummer.