Advertisement
Published: February 6th 2019
Edit Blog Post
Mt. Ngauruhoe
Also known as "Mt. Doom" to all you Lord of the Rings fans. Off to New Zealand
New Zealand has long been on the wish list. Of course, the main agenda is to chase trout. The crystal clear waters across the country filled with trophy-sized brown trout puts NZ on every fly fisher's list. And there will be some of that. But there is more.
Our son, John, spent eight weeks with the Kiwi's and loved it. He enthused about the hikes, the rivers, the glaciers and mountains, but most of all about the people. He talked about how all New Zealanders want you to love their country as much as they do, and go out of their way to make it happen. Including a guy named Stu in Merchinson who, hearing that John was from the US and a kayaker, allowed him to park his camper in his back yard (along with some folks from England and other places) and join the informal international kayaking crew that is perpetually gathered there.
So we flew from Columbus to Los Angeles, where we took advantage of a long layover to meet two of Marcia's teaching colleagues from her days at Wildwood Elementary. Stefanie and Sherry joined us for dinner and Marcia scored
yet another pair of Stefanie's shoes (she would often gift Marcia shoes from her vast collection) while we caught up on 17 years of family life.
We departed on Monday and landed in Aukland mid morning on Wednesday...where did Tuesday go? Darn that international date line! The flight covered 6600 miles taking about 13 hours. Upon landing we went through the quickest immigration check ever....an electronic scan of your passport, an automated photo machine, and done in about 60 seconds. Only down point was that there was no one there to stamp our passports. Then to agricultural control, and the staff on the airplane had been so insistent on how strict they are about bringing any food into the country that we had even thrown away our granola bars. When we told the agent who was checking us, he told us we had not needed to, but he was sure we could buy a few here.
We then picked up the camper van that would be our home for the next two and half weeks. After a quick check over, luckily the thing came pre-dented lessening my concern about driving on the left hand side of the road,
and a fill up we hit the road for our first stop, Tongariro National Park.
Right away on the drive south we were struck by the landscape. It is like nothing we have ever seen, at times the steep hills were tucked closely together with the only flat place seeming like the road we were on. The the hills would spread out, still steep but with wider valleys between them. Everywhere we looked we saw cattle and sheep grazing, often on hillsides that seemed too steep to stand. Also, it should be noted it is summertime here; with roadside stands advertising sweet corn, strawberries, blue berries, and watermelons. Marcia is enjoying the agapanthus, hydrangea, Queen Anne's lace, and canna lilies in full bloom. They all seem to grow wild here along every roadside.
We were cruising along southwards and getting a bit hungry when we spotted a food truck in the town of Huntly advertising mussel fritters--who could resist that? We pulled in and ordered one, the cook asking where we were from and so on. Learning that it was our first meal in NZ she set out to prove what we had heard about the locals wanting
to make a good impression and offered us a cup of their seafood chowder, on the house.
We motored on until we reached National Park, a small village outside of Tongariro National Park where we are spending our first night. There was also a great view of Mt. Ngauruhoe who looked every bit the part of Mt. Doom that it had in the Lord of the Rings films. After two short hikes, one to a beautiful waterfall, and a good meal we called it quits and turned in early.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.25s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 67; dbt: 0.0931s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb