Tongariro > Wellington
We were treated to another lie in until 10:00 then piled our stuff onto the bus. We got some great photos of Mt Ruapehu (Mt. Doom) from the roadside on our way down. Kerry showed us places where frantic work was going on to strengthen bridges and roadways in preparation for the Crater Lake at the top to burst out and run down the side of Mt. Ruapehu. This natural phenomena / disaster is called a Lahar. The last major Lahar at Mt. Ruapehu was on Christmas Eve in 1953 when 153 people died in a train crash due to a bridge being swept away. It was odd to see such resignation to the fact that such a natural disaster was immanent and likely to cause such destruction.
At a coffee stop we picked up another Stray driver called Nancy. She was to take Kerry’s bus back up to Hamilton when he crossed into the South island. Rebecca was the only one booked to go back up with this bus. We stopped en route to Wellington at a town which hosts the world Gum Boot (that’s a wellie to you and me) throwing competition. They even have a special arena build for the purpose…. Well when I say arena it is really two long high chain link fences erected on some common ground beside the railway. Kerry was able to sort us out with a pair of wellies for our own Wellie Winging competition. The best Male and Female were to get a free drink at the bar that night. So against some strong competition… and to be fair some very funny but bloody awful attempts Graham and Sophie were crowned champions.
We got checked into the Downtown backpackers. The Downtown building is quite famous in New Zealand due to an appearance the Beatles made on the balcony back in the days when it was a hotel. The window of Graham’s room opened up onto this balcony, so I guess it may have been part of the suite they stayed in.
We were going to stay in Wellington for a couple of days, and the majority of the rest of the bus were moving on the next day, so we opted to treat ourselves to private rooms for the first time in a while. It was great to have an en-suite with roasting hot water… it was the first really good hot shower and shave in a long time.
The afternoon was spent catching up on washing etc. We all met up in the hostel bar for dinner. The bar had good music, good food and cheap drink (even cheaper for those who won the Wellie Winging) so needless to say we stayed there for the evening. The crowd in the bar consisted of Kerry, Rebecca (English chick on WWOOF scheme), Nancy (Maori Stray driver), Swedish chicks, Swedish blokes, Patrick (bloke from London whose look, manner and accent were very like Jack Dee). The craic was great, the quiet Swedish chicks came out of their shell with a BANG, it turned out they were big R&B fans, so they spent a small fortune on the video jukebox and had it large gyrating on top to the tables etc, much to the amusement of the blokes in the bar. When the bar started to kick us out Patrick had his arm twisted by the Swedish chicks to head out to a club [yeah like it was that hard ;o) ] and a few of us adjourned up to the drivers flat for some more banter until the wee small hours.