Tongariro, Taupo and Rotorua

Well...this is long overdue, but here it is!

Tongariro

After the caves Mike and I headed down to National Park and stayed at this awesome old ski lodge hostel called Skihaus! The hot tub came in handy after our long hike in Tongariro National Park! I actually convinced Mike to go on what we thought was an 8 hour hike called the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It was quite an amazing hike. The whole area was full of volcanoes (a few are sometimes active!) and so most of the hike was over barren land, up the sides of volcanoes and along the edge of craters such as the Red Crater,

which was a very cool red colour. One volcano we hiked past, Ngaurahoe, was Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings! It was a perfect cone shape and looked very dark and foreboding – a perfect choice for the movie! We originally had thought we wouldn’t have time to climb it, as we thought the hike might take us 8 hours and we had to make a shuttle at the other the end. However, the hike ended up taking us 6 ½ hours (including a very long stop at a hut for lunch!) so we were a bit disappointed we didn’t do it. Maybe next time in NZ! Other sites on the hike…lots of sulfur gas leaking from the sides and craters of the volcanoes (stinky!) and very beautiful blue lakes. I reallly enjoyed the hike and I think Mike may even have enjoyed it too (although he probably won’t admit it later!) I was sad we didn’t have time to do more hikes, but alas we had to keep move along…

Taupo…

…was pretty much a waste of time. We essentially waited here for sky diving, calling every couple hours for updates from a pay phone since we don’t have a cell with us, for a full day. And we tried the next day too, although we didn’t let it ruin our plans this time. The weather was either too cloudy, or sunny but too windy…very frustrating. Taupo itself was a fairly small town on the edge of a giant lake (which is actually the crater of a volcano!) and unfortunately there wasn’t a whole lot to do there at the time we were there, as it was a bit too cold to go swimming in the lake and that sort of thing. But I am sure it would be a very fun place in summer or winter for skiing. We spent a lot of time in a cheap internet café we found one night.



The second morning there, however, we went on a bit of a hike to a very cool hot water stream near Huka Falls (which weren’t too impressive, although the sheer volume of water that flowed over them was). There were several natural, rocky pools joined by waterfalls you could sit in or stand under, and it flowed into a cold river so you could swim in there to cool off! They all had different temperatures, but some parts (especially sitting in one of the falls) were as hot as a very hot hot tub. I’m gessing 104 degrees? We spent a fair bit of time there relaxing/swimming. There are tons of thermal pools and streams in NZ…the whole place is basically a giant volcano waiting to erupt! It’s really interesting.

Rotorua

We met Mike’s uncle Dan in Rotorua and stayed with some of his friends there, Gay and Bill. They lived on a gorgeous lake front property just across the lake from Rotorua, on Maori land. They had a gorgeous view of the lake from their living room, a huge yard with a beach and a vegetable garden that produced tons of delicious veggies! Gay made the most delicious meals with the fresh veggies. We were very lucky to stay there. Bill is Maori and it was a very neat cultural experience for us. Rotorua is sort of like the centre of Maori culture in NZ. Because of Gay and Bill’s connections, we got a good deal on river rafting with a Maori company and an amazing deal on a Hangi (basically the Maori version of a Hawaiian luau...oh interesting tidbit…the Maori supposedly descend from the Polynesians, who travelled over to NZ by boat, hence the similarities between the cultures!)

Dan, Mike’s uncle, was super nice and really good to us. He took us river rafting that first day, and then to warm up in some very relaxing hot pools in a Polynesian spa, a very gorgeous outdoor setting right on the edge of the lake. The river rafting was really fun. We went over several waterfalls – one 2 metres, two 3 metres and the big one – 7 metres! I almost fell out. Beforehand they gave us talks about what to do if you fell out…such as just curl up in a ball if you are submerged, as you may not know which way is up and so you may swim in the wrong direction! That sort of freaked me out, so I was VERY happy that our precariously leaning boat didn’t end up tipping over! What an adrenaline rush though.


Oh, and Mike and I tried ZORBing!!! It was invented in Rotorua. It is basically rolling down a hill in a giant, clear human bubble. It was a RIOT. You had to superman dive through this small opening into this bubble, and then they filled it with some water and covered the hole, and then you essentially tossed and tumbled head over heels down this marble course that wound down the hillside. It was short lived but soooo much fun, and you really picked up speed! I couldn’t stop laughing the whole way down.



The Hangi Mike and I went to was really cool too. Gay’s friend Auntie Bea invited us to come to the one she performed at, at a hotel. She was just the nicest, warmest person I’ve ever met, and really was an amazing performer and singer. The hangi food was pretty decent…traditionally the Maori cook food in the thermal pools, so there were a lot of steamed meats. There was a delicious pudding desert too, with custard and ice cream. After the meal Bea and her crew put on an amazing show with lots of singing (they were all amazing singers!), dancing, etc. The girls did a dance with “poi”, which are two balls joined by a string that you swing around, and the guys did a war dance where they made very scary faces, sticking their tongues out far and bulging their eyes. At one point they invited the audience up so I got to try poi and Mike learned the war dance, along with several other HILARIOUS Koreans who made up the majority of the rest of the audience. It was really funny watching them all try to make scary war faces. Mike was invited up to pose as an honorary chief during the show too. That was hilarious. It was a very cool experience for us.


We did lots in Rotorua…also went for a walk in the Redwood forest there…which they imported from California! So weird. They import a lot of their forests from North America because they grow well and are used for the forestry industry. The Redwoods were not nearly the size of the Redwoods in the forest in California, however, but the walk was still nice and we got a nice view of a thermal area with steaming pools and boiling mud. We also went to the Rotorua Museum of Art and History, which was very interesting. We learned all about the huge volcanic eruption in 1886 that destroyed the once 8th wonder of the world Pink and White Terraces near Rotorua, which had once brought visitors from all over the world. The museum was in a very cool old once bath house building, where they used thermal pools as an alternative medicine…and gave treatments including shock therapy (shocking people while they were sitting in a bath full of warm water!) to treat arthritis and bad nerves, etc… it was very interesting! We also visited a Maori church that had very cool carvings all over it.


Oh, and on the last day I borrowed Gay’s kayak and went for a quick kayak out on the lake. It is a very important bird habitat (although not such a good people lake – very shallow and gross on the bottom!) so there were lots of cool birds to see, including black swans!