NZ - From north island to south

Mount doom and clare
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We arrived back in Taupo and as the weather forecast was good we booked ourselves on a guided hike of the Tongariro crossing. Its an 18.5km hike passing the saddle of two volcanoes, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. Mt Ngauruhoe is mount doom in LOTR!!! The hike took us to 1886m over the red crater, past the emerald lakes to the blue lake before descending to Ketetahi below. Whilst you had to watch your step all day long the sights that your eyes met each time you looked up were breathtaking. The sense of adventure and achievement this trek provided will always remain hard to beat in our eyes and we would say this is definitely a “do not miss” if your ever in NZ.

Tongariro crossing
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After an early night we met our coach to drive to River Valley. We stopped on the way at Taranaki Falls and Silica Rapids. Our driver explained that it was possible to swim at Taranaki Falls but warned us that it might be cold given that the water comes directly from the snow covered mountains above..he wasn’t wrong, at 3-4 degrees we were numb within seconds. From here we made our way to the second waterfall of the day called Tawhai falls which also features in LOTR. The pools at the bottom of the waterfall were shot for the scene where Gollum is fishing. Our drive took us through the Whakapapa national park and we arrived at River Valley at sunset.

Blue Lake
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River Valley is known for its white water rafting, however, the lack of rain meant that the river was very low and the rapids were almost non-existent. Instead we opted for an early morning gallop in the surrounding fields. The rock formations were pretty amazing and we were lucky to see a herd of charging deer and birds of prey hunting for breakfast. After lunch we had a long drive to the capital city, Wellington. We stopped off for lunch in a place called Bulls where many of the shops and buildings had “funny” names. The police station was called consta-bull and the day care centre was called responsi-bull. Other than that it was fairly unremarka-bull…

mount doom and alex
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We arrived in Wellington late in the evening and were starving, luckily dominoes pizza do backpacker rates if you show them your hostel key so a large pizza with the works on costs less than 3 quid! We left early in the morning so a better look at Wellington would have to be had on the way back up. Pizza and beers is not really immersing yourself in what appears to be quite a cultural city.

The ferry to the south island took us across the cook straight and through the Marlborough sounds to Picton, the scenery was very beautiful. The Marlborough region is famous for its wine making (mainly Sauvignon Blanc and Reisling) so what better way to start the day than with some free wine tasting, followed by olive oil tasting followed by flavoured liquors tasting. Lets just say we left there feeling much better than when we arrived! On arrival at Nelson our hostel was fully booked so they checked us into a cute colonial style house across the road and invited us back for free beer tasting which flowed into some more wine and a big bowl of mussels followed by a very good nights sleep and dreams of more free booze.

Mount Ruhapehu
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In the morning we needed to clear our fuzzy heads so visited Lake Rotoiti, one of the lakes in the Tasman Lakes national park. The lake is surrounded by snow capped mountains which keep the lake topped up. Off came the clothes again for another skin tingling dip off the jetty. After lunch it was off to Buller Gorge for a jet boat ride with a crazy kiwi who was calm one minute then manically laughing and pulling 360’s in the boat the next. Even with all the waterproofs we all ended up soaked. In the evening we watched England lose the rugby and ended up getting invited to a lock-in by some locals - another late night..

Taranaki Falls
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The only thing that got us out of bed the next day was the promise of fur seal watching at Cape Foulwind followed by a visit to the Punakaiki pancake rocks and blow holes. Then it was on to Lake Mahinapua to see the eerie mist and cool reflections of the moon and surrounding scenery.

Mahinapua is also famous for one more thing, it’s called “The Poo Pub”. Basically every day of the year an 80 odd year old man called Les invites travellers to his pub to stay, have dinner and party till the early hours. The only condition…you have to dress up! Our hopes of an early night were dashed with drinking games and some very dodgy dance moves. Just in case you cant tell from the photos Alex is the pink disco princess and Clare is the cow girl.