Entries in "Taupo/Rotorua"
I'm standing on a volcano, Sun Aug 13, 2006
You ever had soo much to say it made you not want to say it, because the saying would be long and tiring? Me, too. I wrote only a few days ago, but we're moving really fast now. No time (or money) to hang about.
I was sad (*sniff*) that I didn't get to walk to the famous Tongariro crossing. It's a one-day walk that looks like your hiking across the face of Mars--steaming pools, no trees, wierd colored rock--that's covered in snow right now. So I opted to take a drive with Ben around Lake Taupo and check out the mountain from the highway. We went around Tongariro and hardly got a glimpse thanks to poor weather. We were circling around it when I stopped at a sign that said Maori village excavation site.
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Step 1 Steal underpants - Step 2 ... - Step 3 North Island, Thu Aug 10, 2006
After spending my entire trip on the South Island, I was a little scared to make the leap and cross into uncharted territory: North Island. It's funny how quickly we get used to the way things are and the familiar place and people your life starts to build upon. I know the South Island really well by now, and coming North almost feels like starting over. And it is all new in a way, and I have once again been disconnected from what I knew and the home I had made. I'm a traveller again.
We spent our next to last night on the South Island camped out on the beach in the rain. We were dead set on building an (illegal) bonfire, but had only picked up a few pieces of firewood and an axe from good old Swampy's Backpacker. While we were setting up the tent in the dark at around 9 pm, some cars drove up and settled in the carpark. We were a bit nervous for some reason, but I thought it was a bunch of kids out to do what we were trying. So I grabbed the wood and newspaper and found them on the beach...building a bonfire! We added our chunks and had a nice one going for a few hours, but is was really wet outside! We slept in till noon the next day because the rain just kept coming.
After only a week, we've made it halfway up the North Island. We crossed the Cook Straight on Monday(I think) and only spent an hour or so in Wellington. The crossing was uneventful; calm seas, but foggy and rainy so we couldn't see anything. The national musuem Te Papa in Wellington is really cool, though, and has a ton of awesome interactive exhibits and cool Maori artifacts.
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