Arriving in Taupo at 12pm, I had some time before my skydive at 2pm, yep, I said skydive. I took some time to have lunch and settle down in the hostel. I also talked with the lady at the reception who told me that the tongariro Alpine Crossing was closed for the next 3-4 days... I couldn't believe it. I was going to miss it especially that I took 3 days in total to do that trail in case of bad weather but apparently it won't be enough. She quickly told me that there is a company who does the crossing with winter gears with guides and this one is open. I decided in two seconds to sign up for it next morning.

Time for the skydive arrived, a hummer limo came to pick me up (bright yellow). I know, I know, the environment... but it was a small one. No excuses except that it picked up several people not just me. I took the 15000ft dive that last 60 seconds... It's really impressive how fast it is. They set me up with all the gears. A group of 6 of us with our tandem partner went in the plane and we started taking off. When you reach 5000, they started to give us oxigen and at that moment, you kind of start realising what you are about to do. The plane kept going up, the door opened, the air chilled my bones, I start shaking from the cold, and few guys jumped at 12000ft. We keep going up for 15000ft and then it's my turn. When you legs are in the abyss of the sky, you can't go back .... and you jump. Three letters ..... O .... M ..... G.... I can't put word on the feeling. It's just awesomeness in your body, mind, heart. You need to try it once if you haven't done it. And the scene ... it was amazing. Mountains with snow, the lake. Paradise. I know, I wrote that several time since the beginning of this blog but it's true.

You think after that my day was over. Not yet. I wanted to go see the Hura Falls and the Crater of the moon. There was a walking path along the river to go there. I decided to do that and left at 15h30. I though like all the other trail, when it said 1h, I do it in 30mins... not this one. The time was right. It took me 1h20 to go to the falls where I took some nice pictures from the river and an other 40mins to go to the crater of the moon that closes at 5pm... Yeah if you do the maths, I missed it and decided to walked back to the hostel ... in the dark. No choice. But at that moment, I meet in the dark ... a german guy named Alex who did almost the same thing that me and was on his way back to Taupo so we took the path back home together and talked for 2h about the usual stuff where are you from, what do you do, but also about everything. It was quite a fortunate meeting :).

After all that, I ate, watch part of the movie in the common room and went to bed at 10pm because next morning, wake up at 5am.