So I'll continue with the story of my April break:

After spending the night in Taupo, I was a bit in limbo. I had planned on doing the Tongariro Crossing hike that day, and then continuing on to the Coromandel Peninsula which is much farther North. To come back from Coromandel to do the hike would be very inconvenient, so I waited around town for most of the day just waiting for the weather report to see if I could do the Crossing the next day. I got a ride from Ellen, a girl from the Netherlands that I had met at the hostel, to Huka Falls, a set of powerful falls that dump into Lake Taupo from the north. After learning that the weather looked bad again the next day, I caught the bus I had intended to take anyways north to Rotorua, where I spent the night. At the hostel that night, I met a German named Arthur who had been touring around New Zealand on a cheap department-store bike with about three times the gear he needed.

In the morning, I caught a publicly-run bus from Rotorua to the coastal city of Tauranga, where I immediately caught a bus to the town of Coromandel via the old gold-mining town of Thames. From Coromandel I had planned on hitchhiking to Mahamudra, the Buddhist retreat center I was headed towards. While in town getting groceries and other things, I randomly began talking to some people I had seen on the bus, and learned that they were headed to Mahamudra to work as well. They were two sisters Floor and Juri and their mother Meriam, from the Netherlands. They were catching a ride to Mahamudra from Elaine, the manager of Mahamudra, and I tagged along with them.

At this point it was Thursday afternoon, and I stayed at Mahamudra until Monday afternoon. Normally, Mahamudra is a center where people can come to go on solitary retreats that are undergone in Tibetan Buddhist practice. Retreaters are provided with a private cabin and have groceries left on their doorstep each week. Some of these retreats might be for a specific purpose, for example one common retreat involves repeating 10,000 mantras to oneself. One of the retreaters was on a 7 year retreat. The weekend I was there, there was also a course being taught by a monk from Australia on Tantra. This meant that there were about 10 additional people staying at the center, and that there was plenty to do. I worked for a total of maybe 2 hours a day preparing breakfast and supper, doing dishes, and doing general cleanup around the place. In exchange for this I got a bed to sleep on and and the use of their kitchen to cook my food. My off-time I spent reading (from their spiritually-inspired library), talking with the guests and other people working, sitting in on the guided meditations and teachings and wandering around the place. If I had to describe the experience with one word, I'd call it relaxing. It was nice to after bustling about to finally have a consistent place to lay my head and not have to worry about how I was going to get around or what I was going to eat. While I Mahamudra, I took a few bicycle rides to the nearby town of Colville, and took a day hike up a nearby hill with Sam, who was a French guy taking a year off before heading to the University of Edinburgh. The picture to the right is from the top. One night, we all went to a local barn to join in a community jam-session. The area around Mahamudra was a big hippie destination in the 70's, and many agricultural communes still exist in the area. As a consequence, there is a strong community feel and everything in the town is run as a cooperative. At the jam session, everyone in attendance was able to join in to make music as a group. By the end of the night, I had played guitar, bass, bongos, piano, xylophone, dijeridoo, and sang.

On Monday, I got a lift from a woman who had been at Mahamudra for the course all the way back to Taupo to do the Tongariro Crossing. She was driving straight across the North Island, and by chance overheard me talking about going to Taupo and offered me the ride. The next day I did the hike, in cloudy weather. The Tongariro Crossing is basically a hike through the many craters of Mt. Tongariro. The clouds prevented any real views from the mountain, and also prevented me from being able to summit the neighboring Mt. Ngarahoe, which was Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings. The hike was really interesting nevertheless, and definitely worth it. The picture to the left is me at the so-called Emerald Lakes, about half-way through the trip.

After doing the Tongariro Crossing, I took a bus to Turangi, and hitchhiked to Taupo. I spent the night there, and started out early trying to hitchhike back north. I wanted to get back up to the Coromandel peninsula because I had booked a bus ticket from there to Auckland, where I had to be by Wednesday for my plane flight back to Christchurch. I made it as far as Tauranga, which was a bit less than halfway, but could not for the life of me catch a ride out of Tauranga. I began counting the cars that passed, and after passing 300 I gave up. I had the number of my flatmate Moana's parents, who lived in Tauranga, so I figured I'd give that a try. I rang them up (as they say here), and they said they would be happy to have me spend the night. Moana's parents were funny and interesting; her father was an Anglican priest, musician, and whiskey connoisseur. When he performs weddings, he always asks for a bottle of Scotch in lieu of payment. He made me taste a few whiskeys that he had collected this way before going to sleep.

In the morning, I took a bus to Auckland. I spent a few hours wandering around and eating lunch, and then it was time for my flight, which was fairly uneventful. This brings me to a good stopping point. We are now about halfway through my April adventures, the rest of which will include a lot of backpacking on the South Island. After I get through all of that, I'll leave some updates about life back at the university!