Lake Tahoe, er... Taupo
Trip Start
Jul 14, 2009
1
38
40
Trip End
Mar 19, 2010
Taupo, North Island, New Zealand
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
But first I stopped in Wellington. Here I had a friend who I had met in Australia, and also concert tickets. Plus Wellington is where the ferry takes you, not to mention the capital of NZ. Possibly worth checking out. I'm told I was lucky that I got back to back sunny days while I was there, apparently Wellington is not a “weather” destination. Two of my nights there I met up with my friend Jason who took me to some places I would not have otherwise seen on my own. Hilltops high above the city, among the mansions, overlooking the harbour. Wellington also has a place called Te Papa, a cool museum with a cool name. While I’m not a huge museum guy, I managed to spend a couple hours here and see some interesting things. Namely, the “colossal squid”. You can imagine what this means. It was huge. Then there was the concert, the main reason I timed my trip to Wellington this way. It was really good, I enjoyed it. I think I should be a concert reviewer for a newspaper or something, hey?
Oh, and another fun thing in Wellington. My friend Jason took me to the government headquarters, some would call this the “parliament” buildings. Across the street was a pub called Backbenchers, a political themed bar with caricature/mannequin representations of Kiwi political figures. We stopped there for a beer and saw that they were shooting a live TV show inside, creatively called “Backbenches”. I couldn’t hear exactly what was going on, but it seemed to be a panel of three members of parliament debating all the hot issues, one of whom had an interesting version of himself up on the wall. At one point the host came out to ask a trivia question to some of the bar patrons. While I was (thankfully) not chosen to participate, I was prominently featured in the background of the shot, making my New Zealand television debut. I’m sure you saw it.
After Wellington it was off to Lake Taupo, the largest volcanic crater lake in the world. I think. You might notice that I’m not sure of many of the facts I spew in this blog, I rarely bother to check things I hear. Or think I hear. Not important. The big thing I wanted to do in Taupo was the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, an 18km, one day track through dormant-ish volcanic terrain. More importantly to many, including Dwight Schrute, this was the path through Mordor to Mount Doom.
The day started off on the wrong foot, as the bus which was supposed to pick me up (along with two other people) did not show up. This was upsetting, especially since we were told to be waiting outside at 530am. Luckily for us, another bus drove by and took us. He was supposed to be full but three people did not show up, working out well for us.
As we got closer to the start of the hike, and the sun came up, we could see that the entire area was covered in cloud. Not the entire sky, just where we were going. It was like the clouds were hung up on the mountains and refused to blow away, despite the miserable winds. Not much we could do at this point, so we began our 6-8 hour hike through the volcanic landscape. It was like being taken back to Iceland in a lot of ways. Now between the cloud cover and the intense wind, the weather was not on our side. Many of the breathtaking views were obscured by cloud, and the famous Mount Doom was hidden all day. Not that I would have recognized it anyway, but some people were rather upset. Still, what we could see was amazing, and it was unlike any hike I’d done before. Except maybe bits of Iceland.
As much as I moan about the weather, I think a bigger issue was the number of people on the track. It seemed like there were about a thousand too many hikers out there, sadly that’s not even an exaggeration. Our bus driver told us that because of the cloud and wind, half of the bus companies didn’t even run that day, and that they have up to 2000 people out there on a sunny day. This would be pretty painful, since even with half the people it still felt at times like you were waiting in line to walk along the single path. But, on a sunny day, its understandable why so many people would want to see this. It is Mordor, after all.
Turns out the bus that was supposed to pick us up in the morning “just forgot”, according to our hostel reception. But as luck would have it, after they picked everyone up, they ended up turning around and scrapping the day due to bad weather. So in the end it worked out for me because I probably wouldn’t have got there otherwise. Still I feel like I need to go back and do it again on a sunny day.
Other time in Taupo was spent wandering the town, walking out to a place called Huka Falls. It was a pretty nice walk, and on the way was a hot spring feeding into the river. Huka Falls itself seemed like it would be more appropriately named Huka Rapids, but still a worthwhile stop.
From Taupo I go to Rotorua, famous for its smell.
