Lori's NZ Blog

North Island Adventures

After spending Christmas in Chicago, I had another week off which I spent in the central North Island, visiting Tongariro National Park and Waitomo.

Tongariro is the oldest national park in New Zealand, and is known for its three volcanos: Mount Tongariro, Mount Ruapehu, and Mount Ngauruhoe. On Jan 2, after going crazy at Kathmandu (kinda like REI) buying hiking clothes and supplies, I drove up to Tongariro (web album) and checked into the Tongariro Crossing Lodge. When I arrived, there was an incredible rainbow over the park. I got some pretty good shots, but I wish I had a wide-angle lens!

The next day I did the Tongariro Crossing, which many guidebooks refer to as the "best one-day hike in New Zealand." The Crossing is a 17 km (10 mile) one-way hike across active volcanic landscape. My web album has photos and descriptions of the hike.



Mt. Ngauruhoe is better known as "Mount Doom" from the Lord of the Rings movies. Although the long shots of Mt. Doom were either CG or a model, some of the Mordor sequences were filmed in Tongariro National Park, and the close-up shots of Sam and Frodo climbing Mt. Doom were shot on Mt. Ngauruhoe.




Here's a little more info on the park itself if you're curious. Here's also a cool web site describing the eruption of Mt. Ruapehu on September 25, 1995. The descriptions are the best thing about this site -- the pictures are grainy scanned images. Some better photos are here. Mt. Ruapehu is a ski destination, and the volcano erupted in the middle of ski season. In these photos, you can see hikers/skiers still near the slopes with the volcano erupting in the background. Amazingly, no one was killed.

While in Tongariro, I had the pleasure of hearing the song of the tui bird. The tui song is so unusual that when you hear it, you start looking around wildly and saying, "Was that a BIRD?!?" I got a little audio of the tui call in this video taken in the Tongariro forest. Speakers UP!

For a professional recording of the tui song, click here.

On Jan 4, following my Tongariro adventure, I woke up very stiff and sore and took a short but lovely drive to Waitomo. Waitomo is best known for its glowworm caves. Glowworms are little fly larvae that attach themselves to the tops of the caves and drop a bunch of little sticky lines to catch bugs. They are "glowworms" because their poop glows in the dark. Not very glamorous, but the result is magnificent. When there are hundreds of these things on the ceiling of the cave, and all the lights are out, you almost feel like you're outside looking up at the stars. They let off so much light at times that once your eyes adjust, you can see the cave around you even with all the lights out.

Aside from taking a short boat tour of one of the glowworm caves, I also did a 2-hour horseback ride through some of the Waitomo farmland. It was really cool and the landscape is beautiful. It's neat to think that many of the hills you see around Waitomo have big elaborate caves carved by underground rivers right beneath the surface.



My horse Nugget really enjoyed walking right on the very edge of dropoffs, which was a little nerve-wracking at first, but eventually I got used to it and let him do his thing. Here's a short video of part of the ride as well as some pictures in my web album.

The next day was my LOST WORLD EPIC ADVENTURE!!! I always feel like that phrase deserves all caps and at least three exclamation points. It's a caving trip that involves hooking yourself onto a line and dropping 100 meters into a cave, then hiking/climbing/swimming your way through the cave to its exit. It takes all day long and was just an incredible trip. There were a couple points where I was scared as hell, but I made it through in one piece. It's one of those experiences (kinda like running a marathon) where you realize that maybe you have bigger cojones than you thought you did.



I would recommend it to anyone who is reasonably fit and isn't scared of eels or spiders (and can "hold it" for 7 hours). Web album is here.

The day following the EPIC ADVENTURE!!! was a nice relaxing day bumming around Waitomo. First I went to the Otorohanga Kiwi House to see some native NZ birds. Since kiwis are nocturnal, they keep the lights out in the kiwi section so they'll be more likely to walk around and peck at the ground. I got some videos of the kiwis and a bunch of other birds, but since taking videos of birds in captivity isn't very impressive (and the videos aren't very exciting), I decided just to upload this one (best viewed at smaller sizes), since EVERYBODY loves ducklings. Awwwwww.

After the bird house was the Angora rabbit shearing at the shear shack. Here's Angus and I, prior to shearing:



I'll let the video show you how it's done... these ladies describe it way better than I ever could. My disk ran out of space halfway through the shearing, but you get the general idea.

In the afternoon following the rabbit shearing, I went for a nice leisurely stroll (only three hours this time!) through the farmlands surrounding Waitomo. Check out my web album for a few pictures.

All in all, an incredible trip! This may be a small country, but there is an incredible amount of variety here - enough to keep me occupied for many years. Come on out and visit and see for yourself!

posted by Lori @ 8:06 PM