City, Sea, and Volcanoes

Currently I am sitting in the kitchen area of a campground in Tongariro National Park on the North Island of New Zealand.  We have had a difficult time finding free wifi, so we have to pay for internet connections at "hotspots".  My time is counting down as I am typing, so I apologize for what may be a hurried post on what we have done so far.

After spending a day in Auckland, we picked up our Jucy Van (the actual name of the company) and drove south.  Our main objective of the day was to find a place to go to a beach.  Winter has not been harsh in NC this year, but a little beach time is always needed.  We ended up in Raglan, on the west coast.  Raglan is a small, slightly touristy beach town.  There are several beach accesses to the Tasman Sea within close proximity of the town.  One of these was made famous in the 1966 surf movie, "Endless Summer", Manu Bay.  The bay is famous for its left hand shore break, but it was flat and glassy.  Just north of there was another beach, Ngarunui Beach, which had a small break, perfect for learning to surf.  While we were there, the local schools were bringing kids for surf lessons as part of a school physical activity program.  The girls were pretty amazed that their PE included surfing, not a bad way to end a school day.  More Information on Raglan, NZ

We stayed at a Holiday Park (campground) just across the waterway from Raglan.  Easy access to the beach to watch our first New Zealand sunset.  Mckayla and I even got up early and did a walk/run to explore the campground and then across a pedestrian bridge into Raglan.  The town was still pretty much asleep at 7am, but it was fun to run and look at the houses and shops.

Mckayla and Skyler at Ngarunui Beach

From Raglan we headed east towards Matamata to visit Hobbiton.  This is a working sheep farm where they filmed the Hobbitt scenes for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Hobbitt movie.  For a national tourist attraction, there was little fanfare on where it was located, just a few directional signs within 10km.  No billboards or tacky signs.  The office was housed in a converted wool shed and the tour guides were locals.  It was really a great afternoon touring 44 Hobbitt holes, with a knowledgeable guide who gave lots of interesting facts about the history of the farm, the location siting for the movies, the actual filming of the movies and quirky tidbits about the props, sets, make-up and actors.  Skyler can fill everyone in, she took notes, "21 facts about Hobbitton".
More information on Hobbiton

Yes, we are at Hobbitton!

Yesterday, after Hobbitton, we headed south down the west coast of Lake Taupo and arrived in Tongariro National Park.  This morning we did a tramp (hike in NZ) on the Tongariro Crossing which takes hikers (trampers) up to a saddle between two volcanoes (Mt. Ngauruhoe and Mt. Tongariro).  We had originally planned to do the entire 19.4km trek from Mangatepopo Valley to Ketetahi parking area, but due to active volcano activity (vents emitting steam from the Emerald Lakes area to the Ketetahi shelter), a portion of the trail was closed.  We did hike to the saddle just above South Crater to just below Red Crater.  Mark continued up to Red Crater and a view of Emerald Lake.  The girls and I rested at the saddle and watch small plumes of steam rise from Mt. Ngauruhoe.  They give you a "just in case there is a volcanic eruption" speech before you start the tramp, so we were keeping our eyes and ears open for any activity.

For those LOTR fans, Mt. Ngauruhoe is Mt. Doom in the triology. It definitely plays the role well.  The landscape around the volcano is rather moon scape like and it is easy to see how it could play a leading role as the home of Mordor.  As we were hiking up one rather strenuous section (Mckayla will be commenting on that in her science journal), it was called the "Devils Staircase", but we renamed it the "Mordor March". 

In all, we climbed to 1186m, and hiked about 15k total.  The girls definitely deserved their ice cream at the end.  More information on Tongariro National Park

The internet connection here is REALLY slow, so I won't load anymore pictures at this time.  I will soon.  Tomorrow we plan to do a couple of small hikes nearby and then head south to Wellington and then onto the South Island on Sunday.  Cheers!