Nov 12 - Booking Stuff and Not Much

Noon seemed like a good time to get up today, and since yesterday was so eventful, I think a sleep-in was deserved. Wandered over to Subway for lunch; we've been mixing up our sub choices much more than home and today we both went with the meatball sub, which is nice because the meat is hot (not lukewarm like the microwave or toaster oven makes it). After a delicious and healthy meal, we checked out the waterfront of the lake, which today featured about 150 1-man sailboats partaking in some sort of regatta. Walked back into town and picked up groceries for dinner/breakfast, which has been rare in New Zealand, because we've stayed such a short time in each place that it's not worth shopping for one meal. We took our groceries back and tossed them in the fridge and then booked a tour called the Tongariro Crossing for tomorrow. The crossing is an 19 KM hike through the mountains here and is known as one of the best day hikes in the country. It goes past the mountain that was used as Mount Doom and the valleys used as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies. We then went back to a different grocery store and picked up snacks and drinks (Powerade, relax) for the hike. Then we hopped on the computer and booked our plane tickets for when we're back in Australia; from Melbourne to Perth with Jetstar. That still seems ages away. Enjoyed some good American TV after that, and a Japanese ninja game show, then cooked a delicious dinner. Tonight's menu featured BBQ chicken breast, Uncle Ben's rice and milk (for me, B hates white milk so he stuck with Coke Zero). All we were missing was a vegetable to make it a complete meal. But we have apples for tomorrow, so it's all good. I imagine we're going to be sore after nineteen kilometers hiking through mountains, and we have to be up at 5 AM, so now it's an early bedtime. In reality, that was quite a bit that we did, but it terms of the usual adventure level of days, today ranked low.