Tongariro Crossing

After the excitement of the rafting in Rotorua, we headed further south for a couple of hours until we hit a town called National Park ( cunning name huh ? ). The reason for stopping here was to walk the Tongariro Crossing. It’s a 19km hike with a 900 climb to pass between two volcanoes, Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe plus we added another 5km and another 300m climb to get to one of te peaks. Knackering. The area was used by Peter Jackson as a location for Mount Doom when he was filming the Lord of the Rings films. It was a fabulous walk, but jeez, we’ve got out of shape since leaving South America. . . . . .Lucky the scenery was good !

Here's the view the previous evening and then another of the same mountain once we got up close.









There were some fabulous views on the way back down. On the left are the Emerald Lakes ( you would not want to drink this water ) and on the right is a view all the way back to Lake Taupo.











Here's a quick video vista from the tops.

Rotorua

First thing you need to know about Rotorua is that it smells. Bad eggs. Sulphur. A tag-team chuff off with Baz and Lav..

It's about 3 hours drive south from Auckland and it is one of the main geo-thermal areas in New Zealand. The town is surrounded by bubbling mud pools, smelly fumeroles, sulphur pools, geysers, old craters and such like. We visited place called Waimangu Thermal Park and by the time we walked around it, we were ready for something less smelly.......





Which is fortunate, 'cos Rotorua is also the major adrenalin activity centre for the North Island. We decided to raft down the Kaituna River. It was quoted as grade 5 ( which is supposed to be quite bumpy ), but the major selling point was the bit where the raft careers off a seven metre high waterfall. Not too much to say about it, other than have a look at the following sequence of photos..... ( it's us honest ! )


Nice waterfall.




Too late to change our minds...


Touch down !


Submerged somewhere. And breathe !


It's also worth including this photo from a later rapid. The foot poking out of the water on the left of the image is Athena's ! Don't worry folks, we fished her out.

Auckland Part II

On the advice of Joe ( our mate from Leeds who lived here in NZ for several years ) during our posh meal out up the Auckland Skytower ( see photo of me and the Dog bravely standing on the glass floor - Athena and Becky were chicken ! ) we decided to stay an extra day in Auckland.

Joe took us for a 1/2 hour drive out of the city centre and showed off some of the surrounding scenery. First stop was the Karekare beach ( photo on the left ) which is where The Piano was filmed. Apparantly....... I'd never heard of the film....

Next up was the stupendous Piha beach. What a spot. Even better than that was just around the corner through a rock ravine called The Gap. We suddenly had our own private beach with personalised wave machine. Nice warm water too. We had a great time throwing the ball around in the waves, until Joe manage to hit the Dog right in the eye after a deflection from yours truly.....

On the way home we took a short hike up to see Kitekite falls. Beautiful scenery all within a short drive of the city centre, and no crowds......

Here's a bit of vid of our private beach.

Bay of Islands

The Bay of Islands is a beautiful spot about 3 hours north of Auckland. It's a bit like a backpacker's Cornwall, but the water is about 21 degrees. Top cheese.


Unfortunately, just like Cornwall the weather can be fickle. We had hoped to spend the next day sailing on a tall ship, but we were met with a Grimsby Drizzle. So, we hopped into the car and drove across to the North coast, where we found some lovely deserted beaches. The waves were pretty fierce, but it was great fun frolicing about in them as they tried to batter us into submission.

For the evening, we headed back into Paihia and then caught a ferry across to the posh town of Russel. Lovely spot with nice old colonial buildings, just across the water from the spot where the British Crown signed a treaty with the Maoris to initiate modern New Zealand. We had a very expensive fancy pants tea on the water front, but look at the view we had..

We broke the trip home by dropping into Goat Island. Great fun in the surf, especially when the local ducks joined us. I kid you not. Those fellas were bloody good at it too, but a couple took some nasty hits when the hit the beach at too higher rate of knots....