Isildur!!!

Greetings from Mordor!! It's 10 O'clock in the morning, on May the 29th, if you want to know. Yesterday we climbed Mount Doom!! (Mt Ngauruhoe). We are staying in National park village and set off yesterday morning to walk the Tongariro crossing. With it being a one way walk you have to travel with a track transport company. As a result we had about 8 hours to walk 18km- pretty cruisey. However after about 7km there is a side trip up Mt Doom which takes 3hrs, so we decided to do it. Mt Doom is a bitch to walk up (fair play to Sam for carrying Frodo up), it is basicly a big pile of scree with some rocks on the top, so for every 2 steps you take up you slide back down 1. That said, it was well worth the effort, not only for the views from the summit, but also I can now say that I have climbed Mount Doom!!!-(you can call me sad- I don't care).
Anywhoo, it meant we had to walk fairly quickly for the rest of the walk, but we still made it with half an hour to spare.
Since the last blog we have been to Picton, got the ferry over to Wellington, met up with the Fox* again, broken down in Jen's** car, gone back to Wellington and come up to National park village. The back packers here has a climbing wall- and a good one at that. So we have climbed both days we have been here, as well as pioneering the sport of climbing wall megaswing resulting in only 2 minor injuries!!-result!.
I am writing this whilst sitting at the road side waiting for a hitch to Raglan but sadly there is little traffic. I sense a change of plans is on the cards.
Yep, i was right. We are now in Aukland having decided to ditch the hitching and get a bus. So we now have a few days to see a bit of the Northern North island.

* Mike's new name. For those of you who don't know Mike, His name is Michael Jones. From this I was calling him Michael J Fox and have since shortened it to 'the Fox'.
** Jen is Mike's friend who lives in Wellington. We broke down on the way to do a weekend walk.

Hope everyone is HunkyDory.
xx Matt xx

Put your best thumb forward

Right so, where was I?. Just about to set off for Te Anau I believe. Following a few sucesses at hitching fairly short distances we thought we'd try our hand(or thumb at least!)- sorry bad joke) at hitching a bit further, and it has proved very sucessful. On the way to Te anau it took about an hour and a half to get a lift which still left us enough time to start the Kepler track that afternoon. It wasn't the most exciting walk for the first couple of days, just fairly flat and in the forest. The 3rd day was quality though, it was raining and hella windy but really good fun ridge walking. We stayed a night in Te Anau after the walk and treated ourselves to a pub supper (mmmm steak). In the meantime Mike had decided to walk another track whilst Em and I headed back to Queenstown before heading up the West coast. So it was just the two of us hitching the following morning and just as Emma was singing her (soon to be no.1) '29 minutes to Queenstown', we got a lift from a quality bloke from bath- sorry if your reading this it seems we didn't catch your name. He took us all the way to Queenstown so we were back in time for lunch.

Since then we have headed up the West coast, firstly stopping in Fox glacier where we spent two nights. On the first morning we got up at 5am to ride down to lake Matherson where we

took some photos of sunrise over Mt Cook reflected in the lake. We then stopped in Greymouth where it rained so we read books and watched films (if you ever get the chance to watch Dead poets society the don't bother- its rubbish with a capital RUBBISH). And that brings us to now in Nelson where the tinterweb is free!!! and as a consequence we will be uploading photos on to our newly formed photo website. There are already some on there but will add a load more tomorrow. Hope everyone is fine and dandy. Oh almost forgot

http://mattandemma1.myphotoalbum.com/albums.php that should work but if it doesn't then

let me know.

Oh and also..... What do you call a halfling with one leg?... A Hoppit!!

xx Matt xx

He's trying to bring down the mountain Gandalf!

We must turn back! So we're back in Queenstown now having had to change our plans somewhat. We headed to Kinloch (near Isengard) and then walked over to Milford on the Caples track. Had a bit of a break in Milford and went out onto the sound in a boat. We then came back over to Kinloch on the Routeburn track- one of the great walks which was all good. However after a rest day in Kinloch the weather has turned against us. Althogh fine now, snow has been forecast for tomorrow and thus our plans to walk the Rees-Dart track have been scuppered as the bridges over the rivers have been removed. So we have hitched back to Qt today and now plan to head to Te Anau tomorrow to walk the Kepler track. I have sorted out the bank transfers- i was putting the card number instead of the account number- FOOL OF A TOOK!.
What do you call a wizard who knows how to hit a little white ball with a club?........Cangolf.
xx Matt xx