Gollum and Mordor

Monday, February 14th.  Drove from Taupo to the Tongariro National Park.  We were pretty excited as we were heading to the infamous Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings films.

 

After checking into our Adventure Lodge motel, we chatted with the friendly motel owner and he gave us some tips for some short hikes for the rest of the afternoon.  And, for you LOTR fans, we finally met one of the stars from the movies!  Here's his picture as proof. (The owner said it was portrait of his mother in law, but I think he was just kidding!!)

Meads Wall

In the afternoon, we visited Meads Wall in Whakapapa ski Village.  Don't remember this from the LOTR movies, but the rock wall involved an important scene with Gollum, apparently.

Will add more to this post later...
Sorry for the delay folks, we've been on the road alot lately and little time to blog or get internet access.

Starting after 4 pm, we hiked the Taranaki Falls trail, a 6K loop that starts near the Chateau Tongariro in Whakapapa Village.  Overall, a pretty easy hike that took us about 1.5 hours. The start of the trail crossed a scrubby, bushy open area that reminded me of scenery in the Okanagan of BC.  Then we suddenly entered this oasis of lush ferny forest that followed the creek.  Most of the trail to the Falls remained in the forest, which gave us some breaks from the hot late afternoon sun.  When we arrived at the Falls, we realized this was a happening place! 
A huge school group of high school age boys had already settled in to the pool at the bottom of the falls, some going for dips.  Needless to say, it was too crowded for us to go down there, but the view of the falls was nice.  To prove that there are stupid people everywhere, a young couple hung out on the rocks just above the falls - it would be easy to slip and fall there - ah, Darwin's law at work. Ironically we saw this same couple among the hundreds on the Tongariro Crossing the next day, AND we saw them a few days later on the ferry from Wellington to Picton!

Rotorua & Lake Taupo: Bubbly things and intro to Maori culture

Sunday, February 13th:
It's been a few days since I've blogged so I'm trying to remember what we've done the last few days - it's been action-packed!  On Sunday we explored the Rotorua/Lake Taupo geothermal region.  We were kinda choosy about what we did as we've already been to Yellowstone and the geysers and pools there are pretty amazing.

The unidentified white birds!

In the morning we toured an art market held in the Government Gardens area in Rotorua, watched some lawn bowlers, and strolled a bit around Lake Rotorua.  They have very friendly black swans there, and some large white birds that look like fat geese to us, have no idea what they actually are (sorry to the birders out there, maybe you can help identify them?)

Then we headed to a living Maori village called (and make sure you say this out loud and replace "Wh" with a "f" sound to say it properly!) - "Whakarewarewa". Check out their website here:

http://www.whakarewarewa.com.   Our Maori guide, nicknamed Annie, was excellent, and told us about the residents' everyday life.  The steam cooking methods are really interesting - they just place their roasts and vegetables, even puddings, inside their geothermal cook ovens outside their homes, and the ovens work like slow cookers, almost never overcooking the food!  Annie said that the villagers share the ovens and often the meals as well.  They also bathe in some of the warm pools there, which are steaming all around their homes.  Some of their relatives lived through the Mt Tarawera eruption in the late 1880's, which destroyed several villages closer to the volcano.  We also checked out their cultural performance in the afternoon, and saw our first "Haka" dance, the warrior dance, where the guys stick out their tongues and try to look threatening.  Our performers were more funny than scary though :)

Back on the road heading south to Lake Taupo, we stopped at another geothermal hotspot, the Waimangu Volcano Valley.  From here, we got a spot on view of Mt Tarawera, which erupted in 1886 and created the Waimangu Volcanic Valley - the youngest geothermal spot in the world. The largest geyser in the world, the Waimangu Geyser also erupted in 1900 and killed a few visitors in 1904.  Barry and I both felt a little uneasy as we walked through this steaming, bubbling valley, as we had witnessed a rare major eruption of the Steamboat geyser in Yellowstone in about 2005. It hadn't erupted for several years and freaked us all out! 
 Anyway, nothing like that happened on this day, thankfully!  On to Lake Taupo, a huge caldera lake created after a giant volcanic eruption thousands of years ago.  Man, you just can't escape volcanos in New Zealand!

Had a great supper in Taupo, looking out over the lake. It is as big as an inland sea, and we watched a beautiful sunset there.  Our suppers were delicious - had steak grilled on a super heated lava stone - yum!

Hiking, swimming, giant kiwis and rotten eggs!

Panoramic view from top of Papamoa Hills hike

Saturday, Feb. 12th.
After Nat’s dolphin swimming was cancelled, we woke up to a beautiful blue sky day.  We scanned the skies looking for signs of the “bad weather” that had caused the cancellation, but it wasn’t overly windy and the clouds were far away on the horizon.  Maybe weather forecasters are as accurate here as they are in Calgary, ha ha ha. 
Got going a bit late after checking out before 10am. Filled up the car with gas, cost over $60NZD, at $1.99 per litre.  We had driven 400km on the first tank. Grabbed a mocha and the most delicious savoury muffin at The Hub, a coffee shop right next to the Shell. Man these Kiwis know how to do breakfast food!!

Path to summit of Papamoa Hill

We decided to leave Tauranga and head southeast down the coast towards Papamoa. Barry found a good short hike in the Papamoa Hills, which would give us panoramic views in the area. On the way, we took a wrong turn (that’s been happening alot in the Tauranga area, which lacks signs for key freeway turnoffs!!) and decided to check out Papamoa Beach beforehand. Glad we did, as it looked like a nice swimming beach, with lifeguards on duty, changerooms and lots of places to sit on the soft sand.  We decided we’d come back here after the hike to go for a dip and relax.

South to the Bay of Plenty

Today we drove south and east from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty region, the fruitbowl of New Zealand.  So far we've only purchased some NZ apples, but no kiwifruit yet!  We'll sample some soon, we promise!  Our destination was the city of Tauranga, where I was planning to go on a dolphin swimming, whale watching excursion into the bay on Saturday morning.  Sadly, because of expected rain and wind tomorrow, found out this evening that it is cancelled.  I'm very disappointed but hoping that we'll be able to catch up with those dolphins in some other part of NZ later on in the trip.  There are several places you can do it, on both the North and South Island.

View from summit of Mt Maunganui

The drive to Tauranga showed us the pretty rolling farmland and countryside of NZ.  It's so green here it's a nice change from the browns and whites of the scenery in Calgary.  Also, we stopped at another beautiful beach in Waihia, a little northwest of Tauranga.  Hardly anyone at this beach, but it had the same soft blackish sand we saw in Piha yesterday.  If it was a little warmer today, would have loved to go swimming here.  The beaches we've seen so far in NZ rival those of any we've seen on our vacations, including Hawaii and Mexico.

Barry on Mt Maunganui

In late afternoon, we hiked up to the summit of Mt Maunganui ("large mountain"), right near Tauranga.  This was our Stairmaster, Part Deux (if you read yesterday's post).  Known by Maori as Mauao, it is a spiritual place for them and very sacred.  No development is allowed on the mountain. 

Thursday, Feb. 10 - The Road to Piha Beach

Yesterday was an interesting day of driving to say the least!  Poor Barry drove most of the winding road to Piha from Auckland with its lovely blind corners and very narrow lanes with no shoulder.

Leaving behind the morning rush hour traffic of Auckland, we headed west towards the West Coast to check out the black sand beaches of Piha and Karekare (site of several film locations including The Piano).  We took a crazy video on the road that winds down the final stretch to Piha, and if you ever watch it, take some Gravol beforehand if you tend to get motionsick!  The beaches were both beautiful, the sand is so fine it's like baby powder.  The surf is a little rough, so I lost my nerve to go bodysurfing out there. And there was a water quality warning for Karekare beach against swimming. Got a nice burn on my feet and my chest though, where I obviously forgot to put enough sunscreen!  Sun is extremely strong here, no doubt about it.

After visiting the beaches, we took the Scenic Drive back towards Auckland via the Waitakere Ranges and the winery town of Swanson.  The area was thick and lush with vegetation, similar to a rainforest, and quite mountainous.  We stopped for a hike called Fairy Falls.  I'll call this hike "Stairmaster, Part One", as you head down, down, down into the forest on a steep path and stairs, knowing that you are going to have to trudge back up at some point!  There were Kiwis actually running back up, just to humble us even more.  The destination was thankfully worth it, with spectacular falls and pools just inviting you to jump in!  We dunked our feet into one pool, felt great.  The way back was indeed a tad difficult, but at least it was a fairly short hike, in total around 1 hr, 15 minutes.

In the evening, we drove over to the posh district of Mission Bay, where million dollar apartments are the norm.  The main beach road has a seawall boardwalk and row of funky restaurants and cafes, full of people walking, people watching, and having picnics in the park area.  We tried our first "fush and chups" meal at a small takeaway place, and had takahiri fish - a nice mild white fish. Yummmm.