not that much to tell...

well, so since livia and i separated on tuesday morning i drove straight off to egmont village (taranaki national park) and enjoyed a chill evening, cooking a nice meal... the next day i got up round 5.30 am to start the walk up mt. taranaki. the thing is, our visibility was about 10 metres all day long - nice. had to do everything in tevas as well, since my boots were giving me some bloody aweful blisters. going steep uphill and then downhill for some solid 8 hours isnt a picknick!!! especially if half of it is scree (sand and stones mixed together... itll take you 5 steps to actually get on 1 metre...). with the fogg, the clouds the endless slope everything we really felt like sam and frodo... at times even more like smeagol - when we were crawling on the ground to get any further... in the end we made it to the top: started at the car park at 1000 m and stood on the summit which has an altitude of 2518 m!!! good on me, aye?! =) at the top we only had glimpses of how the sun would look like, and then the clouds would come in again... though in these few moments where we kinda had a view, i really thought it was worth the climb... with a sea of clouds beneath us and everything... i wsa sow surprised, though, when there were heaps of sand flies on the top... you wouldnt think they got that far up... and they gave us a hell of a time!!! probably ate heaps of them cos they attcked our food - nice.
i was glad to get back to the hostel after 8 hours and i have to say my legs are a bit soar... =) no pain, no gain, right?!
since climbing taranaki (wow, i cna actually say 'i climbed a mountain!!! =) i had a lazy day in between and then (yesterday) i drove over here to taupo again, where im staying just for two nights. this morning i got up at 5.30 again (isnt that lovely?!) to see the start and the opening ceremony of the nz ironman. gosh, that water looked cold - wouldnt have fancied going in there at like 6.45 in the morning! the ceremony was pretty cool, though, cos they had a maori 'dance' and everything... when all athletes (more than 1000) started swimming it looked like heaps of fish jumping in the water... really weird... anyways, dont want to bore you any longer, so, cheers... =)