Advertisement
Published: March 6th 2008
Edit Blog Post
The North Island of NZ was a refreshing change of scenery. The topography is all volcanic so it finally looks different from Canada!! Wellington is a beautiful city. It's full of art and culture. There was a fringe festival going on while I was there and one morning when I was walking down the street I say a man being painted into the sidewalk as a setup for some photography exhibit. There's a nice promenade and a man made beach that feels almost real. It was made with two tankers full of sand and there was a storm just after it was first made which washed everything into the ocean. Outside of Wellington we headed to Lake Taupo passing Mt. Ruapehu and "Mt. Doom" along the way. Lake Taupo is a sleepy lakeside town with nothing much to offer aside from nice cafes along the beach and overpriced shopping. I skipped the optional dinner and lake cruise and had a really good salad on the lakeside instead. I've been missing vegetables so much since I've left home. The next day I decided to quit the tour and went off on my own to hike around the Tarongarrera (sp?) crossing which spans
two volcanic crators and has tonnes of hydrothermal activity. The hike started at 5:30 in the morning so myself and another Canadian girl had a delightful moonlight breakfast and headed to the National park (it's the second oldest national park next to Yellowstone). The beginning of the walk was pretty simple, a gradual climb through some desert-like vegetation, but the wind was killer. I had to hike with my hood up almost the whole way because the wind hurt my ears so much. Next came the "Devils steps" a 45 minute trudge up rocky terrain at an angle stairmasters wouldn't dare reach. The reward was a spectacular view of the entire valley behind us and a moonscape crator before us. The crator was completely flat with small bits of scoria dotting the surface, and after walking for what seemed like forever we reached the other side where we clambered up the red ridge. The crator walk was tough but well worth while. The scoria was deep and every step forward gave half a step back, but that's life. Once we decended the other side we were hiking alongside a sulphuric acid lake (Emerald Lake). The colors were spectacular, a deep
blue rimmed with citrus green all surrounded by bright yellow sulphur covered rocks. It was a geologists paradise and I ran around doing a little scratch and sniff, picking up rock after rock and marvelling at its intricacies. Eventually we rounded the second crator and began our desent down an alpine medow dotted with hydrothermal vents. It looked like the ground was on fire with all of the steam and volatile gas escaping, I leaned too close to one vent and ended up with a pretty good headache for the next hour. After the meadow we hiked through a beach forest to the second trailhead. Unfortunately the hike which weas supposed to take 8 hours only took us 5 and we were way too early for our shuttle bus. I spotted a guy sitting in a car in the parking lot and convinced him to drive us back into town as soon as his girlfriend dinished the hike. They turned out to be a nice couple from Holland and gave us all sorts of tips on what to see and do in the North Island. Once we reached town we caught a local bus to Rotorua and caught up with
our tour for a Hangi feast. We watched a traditional Maori dance presentation and ate way too much food. I didn't take too many pictures because The cultural presentation felt so forced. When I've watched North American Natives dance they seem to do it with so much heart and for the love of the dance, not just a show and tell for profit. This presentation felt like stealing from someone elses heritage. After dinner a few of us roamed over to the Polynesian spa (hot tubs) it's one of the top ten spas in the world and it was boiling hot. The next morning I woke up at 6 to walk around the sulphur lake and try to find some mud holes (I had missed them the previous day because of the hike) I didn't find any mudholes but I did find out the story of the original spa which was just a deep hole dug near the lake with an attendant to pull out people who had passed out. It turned out that too many people ended up dying from passing out and drowning as a result of the intense sulphur fumes so the spa was shut down, charming.
Later that day we arrived in Waitomo, home of the glow worm caves. I had signed up for the blackwater rafting trip which is basically floating on an inner tube through the limestone caves. First we suited up in an attractive wetsuit/short/helmet combo and fitted ourselves to some tubes before hitting the icy water. I met an eel named cessil who likes to bite every once in a while. The caves were excellent, not necessarily for the glow worms (really just maggots with radioactive entrails) but the group was great and the guides were fun. In the evening I took a walk around town, that took about 15 minutes from end to end. Waitomo consists of two rafting companies, a post office, a little convenience store, a camping park, a bar, and the hotel/hostel we stayed in. Not much to it, but the little town made for one of the best nights of the trip. Curly's, the bar, has a "round the world challenge" where you're given a little map of 12 different beers to drink and as much time as needed. I think there were four or five people who took up the challenge and 3 that finished. Also
one of the girls had her birthday and I'm sure must have tried to drink her weight in liquor. The bartender and I had a good laugh over her though and enjoyed the evening regardless oof the drunken debauchery all around. Next was Auckland, where it rained and came off as just another city, unimpressive, too bad too because I'd heard such good things. Once we left Auckland (we were only there for an hour) and headed up to the bay of islands the weather turned around and it was sunshine for the next two days. The Bay of Islands area is like the vacationers paradise in NZ, warm and inviting. I went on a sailing trip for the day which started with a wild dolphin adventure. NZ is one of only three countries with a growing wild dolphin population, and just like dolphins in captivity they do flips and tricks and whatever makes them happy. I didn't go swimming with the dolphins though because the visibility was poor from the rain and our group wasn't entertaining enough. In order for dolphins to stay around people have to click and whistle and do flips as well, but no one was
willing to try very hard and the dolphins got bored of us easily. On our last evening we took the ferry across to Russel for some delicious fish and chips and some sunset photography, it was a nice ending to a nice tour, but I've realised I'm not the tour type, I prefer travelling alone. I still had a few days in Auckland which I spent sleeping, sending mail home and picking up a few souveniers. There's also a fantastic gelato place on the harbour that was amazing. Eventually it was time to go and I caught a long flight to Singapore.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0443s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb