Everest

You may have noticed from preivous photos that there are huge mountains in the backdrop to the hotel, and as not many people had done it, I thought I would conquer them! After the boozy night from battle of the bands, I set off feeling slightly hungover, complete with packed lunch and camera, Kat was ready. Fair enough, my 'early' start ended up being about 1.30 in the afternoon, I was still keen! The walk starts off nicely and there's a waterfall (not quite on a scale with the monsters in Kauai of course!) where I had my Casino bought lunch, and then I carried on, being led by the bright orange markers that appear on trees and rocks and plants and what have you! Everything is fine until you lose the orange-ness and you yearn for being tangoed again, as you are in fact lost in the middle of nowhere, but when you catch the markers again your heartbeat returns to normal! I even saw Kiwi fruit growing which was strange having never thought about how they are made, my questions are now answered and I can sleep easy. The trail leads you through a few villages and spots where the locals give you a look of utter distain and disgust that you are not 'local', in that I DON'T look dirty and say things like ooh la la. I made it to the top of the mountain which took about 4 or 5 hours, it was at that point that my jubilation of getting to the top was replaced with the horror that I was actually going to have to walk down it as well. Here's where it all gets a bit dodgy. I walked down the other side of the mountain which was a lot greener, and a lot freakier ie it seemed like the set of 'the Hills have eyes'. Complete with a weird little shack where the head mutant clearly plots his next massacre of keen tourists, things also got a little more 'wild'. Thats right, my domination of the mountain also involved me having to defeat wild ponies, bulls, cows, rabid limping dogs with blood thirsty fangs, and my personal fave, wild boars. Not being sure of the position of human-wild boar relations in these modern times, I greeted them with caution and I even had to break up a boar fight. The leader of the pack, who had a black ring around his eye, presumably from the last human encounter, clearly wasn't too keen on me but I managed to pass that hurdle. Phew. The whole thing took roughly forever, and I got back just before I couldn't see anything at about 9pm. Mental, and my legs were telling me that for the next 3 days.