We set out to conquer Mount Doom at 8am. When the alarm went off at 5:30 we hit snooze until 6, but the sun was not out. It was pitch black. We snoozed until we saw sunlight, but at that point there was a car next to us with people outside preparing themselves to conquer Mount Doom, so we waited for them to leave. Right as they left, a car pulled up on our other side and people got out and started preparing themselves to conquer Mount Doom. So we waited.
It took almost an hour down the trail before we even got to the base of the mountain. Whoever thought it was a funny idea to make people walk an hour from the car park and then up the mountain needs a good roughing up. After a quick break we continued up the mountain. Why we thought it was a good idea to scale a mountain without eating breakfast is beyond me. We were extremely weak and whiny the whole time. Alyssa and I made it to the first crater and across, then up the opposite lip, but said we could go no further. Amanda had not yet seen her lake in the crater, which she was climbing for. So she left us there and continued upward herself. I fell asleep and was actually more comfortable lying on the rock than I’d been in the back of Lucy the previous night. We had all thought that was the worst night we’d spent in Lucy; none of us could get comfortable.
Amanda found her lake in the next crater up, took some pictures and some video, and returned to us. We then climbed down the mountain with expedience. As we were crossing the mostly flat path back to the car park, we came to a short drop which Alyssa started to jump off of, but caught her foot on something and fell instead. The way she landed I had expected she might’ve broken her arm, but it turned out that her knee took the brunt of the fall. Nothing broken, but her knee was banged up badly enough to slow our return considerably. We trudged onward. Eventually we decided that Amanda would stay with Alyssa and I would forage ahead so that I could get the van repacked and we could be on our way toward food quicker (the van was still disheveled from us sleeping in it; all the luggage was in the front two seats. It’s not so easy to drive that way).
We drove kind of a long way before stopping for food. It had been nearly 24 hours since we’d last eaten by the time we got to Taupo, which had a strip full of restaurants all clustered together. I wanted a buffet, so I could eat it. All of it. We chose Pizza Hut, hoping they had a lunch buffet here in New Zealand. Apparently they do, but we missed it. We elected to get a special called the Big Night In, which consisted of three large pizzas, a 1.5 liter bottle of soda, garlic bread, and fries, but they let us change the fries to another garlic bread. We then also added an order of dippers, which are like Topper Stix if you’ve ever been to Topper’s Pizza. I’m not sure how else to describe them. Do our Pizza Huts have those? I’m not sure, I don’t frequent Pizza Hut anymore.
Then, after the order is placed, I said we’d eat it there and they said that was for takeaway only. What? I can’t eat my pizza here? I asked to speak to the manager but she was busy, so I ended up talking to the assistant manager or something, and she just kept saying something stupid about how it costs them more for us to eat in and that special is cheap already or whatever. That basically sounds to me like, "we don’t want to wash our tables." How much does it cost you to wash a damn table? There is nobody else in the restaurant, literally nobody. You’d rather have your employees standing around with thumbs in their asses than take five seconds to wipe down a table and keep some customers happy? Assholes. So we ate on their picnic table right outside the restaurant. I don’t know if they saw us or not, they didn’t say anything. I’d half expected them to come out and tell us to leave but they didn’t. I think I’m going to write a complaint to corporate and see if I can get some free pizza.
We continued our journey. We stopped at Wai-O-Tapu, which is a geothermal site with mineral lakes, mud pools and a geyser. They were closed, but I don’t think we’d have gone in anyway since they were charging $27 per person just to walk around and look at stuff. This country is ridiculous, I’m surprised they don’t charge foreigners for the air that they breathe.
We stopped for the night in Rotorua at the Cosy Cottage Motor Lodge. We all took showers, since some of us (Amanda) had not showered in as many as four days. Then I spent much of the rest of the night pulling dead skin off of my shoulders and arms, while Amanda worked on my back. Then I cooked a pot of spaghetti, which we’d bought two weeks ago with the intent of cooking while camping, but apparently campfires are illegal in this entire country. Our cottage had a stove and a refrigerator.
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