Crossing North Island's Central Plateau till Wellington ( 31 Oct - 08 Nov 2010)

---

What is really cool about New Zealand is that views are changing radically almost every hour... you always ask yourself, what is the next thing that is going to bluff me out of myself?

Rotorua, Taupo and the Tongariro National Park are the three highlights of our cross over.

Rotorua is well known for it's geothermal position, geysers, etc. The town smells like rotten egg and I cannot believe people here have to endure this every day. However, the good thing about it is that the they offer a great spa... maybe too great. We obviously had to try it and felt after 30 min in the hot water like 2 louzy fat mussels. You know mussels don't move a lot... same for us! We almost fainted in front of our amazing view in our pool facing the Rotorua Lake...

Taupo is more known for it's lake (the biggest of NZ) and extreme sports. I fancied a bungy jump but felt a bit selfish because Manuela would have just watched the fool jump into nothing without being active for herself. We finally decided to raft the legendary (that's the word the rafting company used on their brochure...) Tongariro River, grade 3 ( the level of difficulty of the current). Unfortunately, we should have gone for a grade 4 and we have no pictures about this event. The current was quite weak and they wanted to rip us of a 40$ for a CD with their pictures on it ( I tried to negociate but no luck, we are not in Indonesia anymore)... No way!

For all Lord of the Rings lovers, you might all remember Mordor...yes? Here in NZ it is more known as the Tongariro National Park. For an instance, we felt like 2 very small hobbits lost into this great movie scenery.

Once arrived in Wellington, bad weather decided to show up. It is true we had been lucky so far but this time we couldn't escape from "Windy Welly" (this is actually how locals name their city). Luckily for us, the must do in Wellington is the FREE Te Papa Museum. Really nice... you can for sure entertain yourself the whole day with all kind of NZ stuff!

It is also from Wellington that our boat ferry will take us to the Southern Island... all abooooard, next stop... Picton!

---

Photos

Rotorua
Rotorua's Poynesian Spa with view on Rotorua River

Wai-O-Tapu
Mud pools

Wai-O-Tapu
Geyser Lady Knox

Wai-O-Tapu
Champagne Pool

Wai-O-Tapu
Devil's bath

Taupo
Huka Falls

Taupo
Lake Taupo

Tongariro National Park
The 3 volcanoes

Tongariro National Park
Lonely hobbit

Tongariro National Park
Happy hobbit