New Zealand !

I have wanted to come here for a very long time, even before I knew that the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed here. For those of you hoping to see photos of filming sites, you’ll be disappointed mostly, as we definitely don’t go out of our way to visit those. If an area happened to show up in the films, and we’re visiting there anyway, I’ll let you know. :)

After flying into Auckland, we drove 3 hours south to Taupo, a nice little town (with excellent restaurants!) situated on Lake Taupo, the largest lake in NZ. Amazingly, I didn’t get any pictures of the lake (because it was so large - 29 miles by 21 miles, still pictures just wouldn’t do it justice). However, I’ll share our view off the back deck of our accommodation, overlooking the Waikato river -

Just upriver from here are the Huka Falls, where the river is forced into a narrow canyon (45 ft across) after flowing peacefully before it at 300 feet across.

As always, to watch the next video, be sure and open this post in a bowser by clicking the link at the bottom of the post.

And after that narrowed canyon, the water falls over 30 feet and gets to spread out again -

We took the tripod so I could get a long exposure picture of the water, but there was so much whitewater and force, I didn’t get the usual “smooth” water shot -

That same day we also visited Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, and were lucky to have some sunny skies…

… that gave me my coveted reflection views -

Every thermal area we’ve visited in the world (Yellowstone, Iceland, Vanuatu) has had unique topography surrounding it…

… but this one definitely had the most interesting color variations!

Another stop on our tour was strolling through the Whakarewarewa Forest…

… amidst towering California Redwoods and Fern Trees -

The next day we undertook probably the longest hike we’ve ever done.

For those of you not well versed in metric, that’s 12 miles (however at the end, we had to hike yet another mile down a gravel road to get back to our car). Note the low hanging clouds in the picture.

So many times as I was researching our trip, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing was praised as “the world’s greatest day hike” so of course we just had to do it. We didn’t have the luxury of extra days to try and wait for perfect weather (as well as needing to book the transportation to the trailhead well ahead of time), so we gritted our teeth and strode off. Besides the grey weather, we were also walking with a bus full of other people. Sigh.

Since we didn’t have large vistas to enjoy, I focused on the colorful lichen around us -

About 2 hours in, as we crossed a large bare plain, the clouds suddenly lifted…

… and we got a clear view of Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings!) -

(see the tiny people hiking across the plain?)

All too soon, the clouds came back in…

… and the light mist…

the hairs on Steve’s arm trapped the mist

… turned to rain accompanied by howling winds -

Not our best weather day for a hike.

We had climbed about 2700 ft in a little under 3 hours, and then we had the long descent. The end of the trail was actually significantly lower than the initial trailhead, and so our total descent was 4000 ft!

I’ve seen pictures of the 3 Emerald Pools taken on a clear day, and they are just spectacular against the dark rocky backdrop (Google the Tongariro Alpine Crossing to see what we missed). :(

No matter the weather, there will still be Instagrammers (with the pink umbrella) trying to get their best shot -

And so we descended…

… and kept walking…

… and walking…

… and enjoying bits of color…

… especially as we got lower -

After 6 long hours of trudging through wind and rain and poor visibility, the backside of the hike gave us a nice view of Lake Taupo -

But we weren’t done yet. This was at the 16 km mark (remember it’s 19+ km long), and we dropped into…

… a gorgeous rainforest that we didn’t expect. Nobody who reviewed the trail mentioned this - probably because they were too beat by then.

This babbling stream was a nice way to lift our flagging spirits (and heels) at the end -

I don’t have a blockbuster end to this post, just stats. The elevation gained and descended was as noted above, and we completed 20 miles (& lunch) in right at 7 hours. Whew.