Blogs from Tongariro National Park, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 26

well, this day goes down as one of the most interesting travel days i've ever had. at least dej and i upheld the canadian stereotype and friendly good samaritans... we pulled in to tongariro national park just after 9am in the hopes of doing the tongariro crossing - the latter part of a 3 day backcountry trek between the two volcanoes there. kev was unable to do one of the hikes at hawaii's haleakala when where were there a few years ago. to make up for it, dej and i decided to do this 17km trek with him. unfortunately, the shuttle buses to the trail only run from 7am to 9am. i think the girl at the ticket booth took pity on us becuase she managed to arrange a special 9:45 trip for us. now the ... read more

How ya goin?? (is what everyone says here) So, I was talked into a bus trip the minute I walked into my first hostel in Aukland. I signed up because "Jen" the girl behind the counter, said I couldnt go wrong....the prob was that Matty B was not arriving till the next morning, but prices were "apparently" going up 30% over night and the offices closed @ 7pm that night...it was 6:51pm....so, if I made this decision in the next 9 minutes I would have to pay Matts fare as well...not even being 100% sure that the man was going to make it over...anyways, I did..as did he. The trip would take us from the Northern part of the island down and around to the south island and back up halfway to the south island. The ... read more

Tavis and I stayed till Monday at Rotorua just relaxing. On Monday we drove to Otorohanga stopping at Tirau where they love corrugated iron and have the tourist info and wool shop made as a giant dog and sheep. We also stopped at a Kiwi house where day and night are reversed so you can see the nocturnal kiwis during the day. They also have lots of other cool birds, lizards and trees. Tuesday: I did the Waitomo Lost World 7 hour Epic (www.waitomo.co.nz) 100 metre Abseil followed by 2km of caving- wading, swimming, climbing and spider climbing through spectacular caves. We saw fossilized oysters and glowworms. We got to jump through holes in the rocks into rivers below in pitch black and walk through waterfalls as well as clambering up, over and under rocks. It ... read more

Since the last blog we have done quite a lot of sightseeing in and around Rotorua. On Weds we visited the Waitomo Caves which have these glowworms that are quite incredible. They walk you down these caves which are deep down, they showed us a few stalactites and then in complete darkness took us along a river in a silent boat to this cave that have thousand of glowworms. They are basically lava that light their bottom to attact food like mosquitos and flies. At the end of their bottom they have a very thin web that catches its prey. The lights are blueish and they are very small but as they were so many of them they looked like those trendy ceiling light fittings you might get. Unfortunately we could not take pictures so have ... read more

I suppose a benefit from having such a cold and wet winter is loads of snow on the mountains and we took full advantage a few weeks ago when we headed up to Mount Ruapehu in the central North Island for a long skiing weekend. As before we stayed in Ohakune but this time we stayed in a place called The Hobbit Motor Lodge - New Zealand's first Mev Berwick themed accommodation. It also suited Jo-Ann's stature with its low hobbit doors - lucikly for me, the beds were more Gandalf sized. Like the last time we went skiing there (see blog from about this time last year), we got great weather, amazing views especially across to Mount Taranaki and also amazing snow - probably just enough powder to keep Keith Richards going for an entire ... read more