Taupo to Wellington
18th July 2006
After the excitement of our skydive, we celebrated in the evening with a few beers at Taupo’s Irish bar. The following day, sporting our first hangovers since England bombed out of the World cup, we lazed around, and visited a place called the ‘Honey Hive’ in afternoon, a museum about bees, I’m struggling to think of anything else to say about this place, but probably a good venue to kill a few hours when hungover (i.e. free!).
The following day we left Taupo, and headed south, towards the Tongariro National Park. This place has several active volcanoes, and is a world heritage site, although its more recent claim to fame, was as the setting of ‘Mordor’ and ‘Mount Doom’ in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Our plan on arrival was to undertake a day long walk on the Tongariro crossing, famous over here as the best one day walk in New Zealand, passing close to the craters of 3 seperate Volcanoes.
Before arriving at the national park however, we stopped off for some more free sight seeing at the National Trout Centre (apparantley the trout capital of the world), yes, we spent the afternoon looking at fish! Unfortunatley our budget doesn’t allow us to go skydiving everyday, so these freebies are a must for passing some time! At the trout centre we saw loads of Rainbow trout, from various angles, from various viewpoints. The ‘highlight’ of the afternoon though, was wathcing the fly fishermen on the river as we strolled through the bush. We came across one guy reeling in a decent rainbow trout as we stood on the bank, as he landed the fish, we watched, not really knowing wether or not his next move would be to release the fish back into the stream, how naive! He simply freed the fish from the hook, and snapped its head right off, nice!
When we got to the National park, we quickly realised that the Tongariro crossing was out of the question, as we were told that the route was under several feet of snow, and could only be undertaken by people with ‘alpine’ experience, and also with a local guide. We instead found a more sedate walk (still 20k’s mind!) for the next day, and found somewhere to park up for the night. The following day we set out early on our trek (or ‘tramp’ as it is known over here), the conditions were ok, a little windy. Once we got going though, it proved to be worthwhile, with amazing views of the snowcapped volcanoes, and numerous ski areas within the park. Unlike Frodo and Sam, we were not able to conquer the slopes of mount doom though, turning back at the very base of the mountain due to the ridiculous winds.
Leaving the National Park in the afternoon we continued our journey south towards Wellington (and ultimately the South Island) stopping over for a couple of nights at the city of Napier, in Hawkes Bay. Napier has become a tourist attration after it was raised to the ground by an Earthquake in the early 1930s. The city was then completely re-built in the style of the day, art deco. This makes for some fantastic buildings, of various colours which are worth a look, in my humble artistic critic opion, the place reminded me much of the Spanish city in Whiltey Bay (the architecture, not the rides!).
We left Napier on Tuesday morning, the 18th of July, and took state highway 1 down to the capital city Wellington, where we planned to meet up with some Geordie Kiwis, Tom’s cousin Sheila and Raymond!
Tags: New Zealand
Chris and Charl
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