Caution: Kiwis Crossing

Our next overnight stop was in National Park, which is the name of the town sitting between Whanganui National Park and Tongariro National Park. Kiwi's just call the entire area National Park. This really confused me because I was waiting for the specific name of the park that never actually came until I finally asked Kate, our bus driver, who had to think about it for a second. It's a strange nickname since there are a lot of other national parks in the country, but I guess whatever you're used to.

On our way to the town, we stopped at Tawhai Falls, which is a lovely, secluded waterfall that you have to hike to, and is where they filmed the scenes of Gollum fishing in Lord of the Rings. Chantal and I were still giddy from the glow worm caves, and we couldn't stop singing Gollum's song:

The rock and pool
is nice and cool
and juicy sweet
Our only wish
to catch a fish
so juicy sweeeet!

We climbed all the way over to the waterfall itself, which made as feel as limber and sneaky as Smeagol himself. I definitely could have relaxed for a while around the pool, but the bus only gave us half an hour, and we had to walk back. We also stopped by a "Caution: Kiwi's Crossing" sign which kind of blew my mind. *Pinch* Yup, definitely in New Zealand.

As we arrived at the hostel, it started to rain, which continued for the rest of the night. The restaurant next to the hostel offered us a delicious backpacker's buffet with all you can eat steak for only $14. I can never turn down steak, so we spent the evening with our fellow travellers in the restaurant and the rain never really bothered us. It was here where Chantal and I really started to get to know our bus driver Kate, who had found a ring on the bus and brought it to the restaurant to try to find the owner. After the 5th time explaining this, Kate just said "Oh I'm looking for a husband." Love her.

National Park is the set off point for the Tongariro Crossing, which is one of the most famous day hikes in the world. Chantal and I didn't have the time to do it, and honestly, I don't know if I had the level of fitness necessary to do it. Because of this, the rain in National Park didn't really bother us. We just joked with the bar tender that the mountain ranges that surround the town don't actually exist, the Kiwis just put them up like decorations in nice weather. For some of the other travellers, the rain was the worst thing that could happen since the Tongariro closes in bad weather. We found out later that some of our bus waited for 3 days for the trail to open, but it never did. I still want to do the crossing sometime in the future, I just need to start doing a sunshine dance to the weather gods so I don't have to be stuck in National Park for a few days with nothing else to do. I should also probably start exercising a bit more. But there's still time for that, right?