New Zealand really is a rural country, all of the highways go through kilometers and kilometers of countryside. The biggest city (Auckland) is only 1.2 million people. The rest of the country is just tiny towns with one bank and the Chinese restaurants that also sell fish and chips.
Our first stop in Coromandel was the famous “Hot Water Beach” on the peninsula’s east coast. This beach is sitting on top of a thermal place, so people come with shovel and dig holes in the sand. The scalding hot water wells up and you have your own, free spa! We didn’t want to go to the trouble of changing into our “togs” (swimsuits), but we did steam our feet in other people’s holes for a while. It was pretty chilly outside, but the water was HOT. Almost 100 C at times.
After the hot water beach we headed over to Cathedral Cove, a beach just a few kilometers up the coast. I wanted to see this particular beach because it was a filming location for the “Prince Caspian” movie. It was featured in the scene when the Pevensie kids first realize they’re back in Narnia and run through the big archway in the stone. It was pretty gorgeous. We got there at sunset, so we could see it very well since the sun went down on the other side of the island. The actual archway was roped off because of the risk of falling rocks, but David and I went through anyway (I mean, come on, I traveled all the way to New Zealand to see this stuff. Like a little rope is going to stop me!). Because we were camping out in our car at nights we decided to stay the night close to the cove. We slept in the carpark up at the top of the cliff for the night. David wanted to sleep on the beach, but we didn’t because it was so cold.
We woke up at 4:30 in the morning and hiked back down to the beach in the dark. It’s amazing how much light the stars give off, we did the whole 40 minute hike in complete darkness (no flashlights or anything). David took his camera down of course to capture the sunrise. It turned out to be gorgeous!! All pink and gold clouds over the horizon. One of the best sunrises I’ve seen in my time (those are much fewer and far between than the sunsets I’ve seen!).
After the beautiful sunrise we took off down south back toward Rotorua. We went to check out a hike to a cave that the internet said had glowworms in it. We made it to the cave but, alas, no glowworms! I was a bit put out. But there was a pretty neat waterfall in the area.
[waterfall area pics]
We continued down south past lake Taupo to Tongariro National Park—which is home to Mt. Doom (not its real name, but the mountain’s actual name is really hard and complicated). We got there pretty late in the evening, so we found a remote back road that came up next to a lake and spent the night there. I’ll admit I was a little nervous at the idea of sleeping in the car, but it worked out really well. No one disturbed us and we were nice and cozy in our blankets despite the chilly weather. It’s quite an economical way to travel if you’re willing to do it!
The next morning we woke up and headed up to the main DOC office in the park’s area. As we drove up to high elevations it began snowing!! We were a little surprised, but happy that it wasn’t raining. I would much rather hike in the snow than the rain. We checked in with the DOC office and figured out a good hike to do in one day. The Alpine Crossing, which is a really popular one day hike in the area, wasn’t available to do due to the weather (it was really snowing up a storm). So we decided to hike up to the Tama Lakes at the base of Mt. Doom instead. The entire hike took about 6 hours round trip. It snowed pretty heavily at the beginning, but then it started clearing up. It would snow for half an hour and then be sunny for half an hour. Back and forth the whole time! The countryside we hiked through was straight from the Lord of the Rings movies. It reminded me of the scene from the Fellowship of the Ring where Aragorn is dragging the hobbits through the wilderness and they’re complaining because they’re hungry. The brush was covered with snow on our way there, but on the way back the snow had melted and it was all colorful and bright. The lakes were pretty gorgeous! Because they’re crater lakes and they have all sorts of minerals in them they glowed bright blue and green. The Lower Tama lake was the most picturesque, with Mt. Ruahepu in the background. Unfortunately, I never got to get a good look at Mt. Doom because it was wrapped in clouds all day. =( We did get some glimpses of the mountain next to it. The Upper Tama lake was up pretty high: it was completely covered in snow and windswept, so we didn’t spend too much time up there. David did make a snowman though, just for the sake of it.
After the hike we decided to head back to Hamilton. Unfortunately, the radiator in our car had a crack and ran out of water. We had to stop and wait for the engine to cool down. It was pretty funny because we stopped right by a cow pasture and all of the cows crowded around the fence to watch David change the water. They were a funny little audience. We made it home okay, but I think the car won’t be suited for long distance anymore!
Overall it was a really cool little adventure. We've done a bunch of things over the past two days as well. Thursday night we went to go see a rugby match being played in Hamilton. It was my first experience witnessing the game, which is actually pretty brutal. The players wear very little to no padding and they crash into each other like boulders. I'm just glad I was watching and not playing!! David took a few pictures before the people at the stadium took away his camera battery due to the fact that the World Cup is coming to Hamilton in a year and they don't want people taking pictures for advertisements, etc.
Yesterday (Friday the 17th) we went to see the Waitomo caves, which are particularly well known for the glowworms that occupy them. We went down into this cave that was speckled with glowworms. They looked like tiny stars spackled across the darkness of the cavern. It was pretty neat to witness.
Today we're on our way to the south island, so you might not hear from us for a week or so since we're diving straight into the Abel Tasman Trek down there!! For now I'll leave you with a bit of the gorgeousness we've seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment