Easter Long and the week leading up to it

Easter long weekend was amazing! But i'll get to that in a minute.

This past week Marilee took Tuesday off so we could climb Rangitoto (i cant spell or pronounce anything here) which is a dormant volcanic island just off the coast of Auckland. It was amazing and so much fun even though we had spent the night before dancing and were a little tired. This island was so lush and green and just beautiful and we had a perfectly clear day so we could see the harbor and downtown. I'll put up pictures later but they don't do it justice. If anyone is ever coming to Auckland, Rangitoto would be my first recommendation.

Alright so that was a highlight of that week which leads up to this past weekend, where instead of climbing a dormant volcano I climbed an active volcano! Because this was a 4 day weekennd a bunch of Marilee and Gordon's work mates decided to rent a couple baches...bach's... I don't know the plural..basically it's a cabin..outside the city maybe 4 or 5 hours drive. So there was 12 of us total and we had two baches and 4 days! We got there on the friday and just hung out all evening and relaxed and had a few beers. The second day we (well most of us) got up early and took a bus to the Tongariro (once again I'm unsure of the spelling) Crossing and prcceeded to climb for a long long time. It was 20 km long and fantastic the whole way! And no, if anyone's wondering I didnt see any fresh lava. I'll put up pictures for you later so you can better understand what it was like but it was definitly worth it...even though a lot of it smelt like sulfur. Oh and also for you Lord of the Rings fans that may be reading this...I was climbing up beside Mount Doom, which was pretty neat...even though i'm not a huge fan myself. Ok so that was saturday. Sunday was just as beautiful so we decided to work a different set of muscles and go kyacking for the afternoon. That was awfully eventful and filled with a lot of waterfights and people falling into the water and it even involved an adventure upstream into a bridges waterchannel. Then today we woke up and packed and tidied up and drove home, sadly, back to real life and into the beginnings of my hunt for a job!