(Which turned out to be rather unimpressive. Maybe it was the overcast sky that was most disappointing about this mountain. Or the lack of fire.(photo right)) We reached a very small city called Taihape which happens to be the gumboot throwing capitol of New Zealand! The city spent thousands of dollars to install a gumboot throwing arena for official events. Believe it. So how could we pass up this opportunity to have a gumboot toss out among our group? We had a variety of creative gumboot throwing methods and came up with a winner. After our short, leg-stretch visit to Taihape, we reconvened on the bus to get to River Valley before dark. And then it began to rain. 
For hours and hours we drove, and then we got to a dirt road and drove for hours longer. Finally the bus came to a stop and we were glad to get off, only to greet a small blue pickup truck that was to take our luggage the rest of the way while we were to walk. It wasn’t too far, a quarter mile maybe, down a steeper-than-usual dirt(mud) driveway (the bus couldn’t navigate it). There at the bottom of the muddy hill stood the River Valley Lodge; the first building we had seen other than sheds and barns for miles, with a raging river behind it. The girls went straight upstairs to claim bed spaces in two giant rooms which were connected at the top, each with 4 bunks in them, each bunk was big enough for 4 or 5 people to sleep on (photo, left.) The boys slept in rooms in a separate building out back. The bathrooms were connected to that building. There were also toilet and shower stalls out back under a roof with a decent floor, but no walls. The rest of the lodge was dining and lounging area.
The next day we woke up to a breakfast of toast, eggs, and baked beans. We were supposed to go white water rafting that day; our entire purpose for coming this far into the middle of nowhere. However, it had been raining all day, all night, and still that morning, and
the river was flooding. The highest the river could have flowed and they would have allowed us to raft it was something like 42 cu cm/sec. The river that morning was flowing at about 153 cu cm/sec! It was really a muddy, raging river of death (photo left.) Needless to say, we spent the day inside. At first we thought we could wait it out, but the river didn’t descend. It was a really boring day. We played games, and cards, tried to not be depressed about missing our white water experience, and looked forward to getting out of this isolation in the morning.
That night, I stayed up late talking to Hoover and Dan the bar man (by this time, I was beginning to think most men in NZ were named Dan…) Dan worked at 
the Lodge when there were guests. He told us about this cat at the lodge, Forest, who was all black. He said it was the meanest cat he’d ever met and I sought out to prove him wrong. I became friends with Forest, after much persuasion. Eventually he attacked my face and ran off for no apparent reason, but he was fun while our friendship lasted. His color made me want to call him black forest. Which made me think of black forest ham. Thus he was lovingly nicknamed. BFH for short. J Hoover thought I was crazy, because apparently they don’t have black forest ham in NZ, at least if they do they call it something else. The only black forest Hoover could imagine was chocolate, and she thought I was talking about a chocolate ham. Haha.
Morn
ing came and we had all packed our luggage, ready to brave the muddy hill on the up slope to get out of here, only to be informed that the storm was New Zealand’s biggest storm of the century and there were many trees that had fallen into the dirt road during the night. Crews were being sent to clear the road, but we would just have to sit tight until they could get there. And so we did. We spent another day bored, struggling and desperate to entertain ourselves. And it is often in times of greatest need that people can be the most creative with their devices. The lodge had a giant Jenga set, which held our attentions for many hours. After we got bored with regular Jenga, we started playing extreme style Jenga, using only our elbows, and then we progressed to Fenga where one could only remove blocks using one’s feet. The tournament proceeded. A few hours later and the Jenga blocks became pieces of a teetering tower.
This day ended with a sudden phone call giving the signal for us to leave, and we were cleared out of the lodge and on the bus within 15 minutes. It was about 5 o’clock in the evening. The bus would have to drive into the night to get to Wellington very early in the morning. After hours of driving on a bumpy, muddy dirt road we finally reached civilization. We stopped in a city called Bulls (photo, right) to grab dinner. I had a kebab at a little Greek restaurant. After some car-sickness and ginger beer on my part, we arrived very late (or very early depending on how you look at it) at the Youth Hostel in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand.
