Wearing Stripes

June 8 - Since my hike was canceled, today was a “free” day. I decided that even though I couldn’t go on New Zealand’s best one day hike, maybe I could still go be near it. The woman at the information center said that I could go hike in Tongariro National Park, but that the weather was awful and I wouldn’t see anything. Apparently not one to take no for an answer, I got in the car and headed for the park. I should note that at the information center (which is just north of the park), it was a lovely sunny day, around 8 C (~48 F).

Well, turns out the locals may actually know more than I do! The temperature consistently dropped as I got into the park. The first picture I have up there is of Mt. Tongariro, which was the ONLY one of the three volcanoes that I could see AT ALL (and you’ll notice it is mostly covered by clouds!). The is the northernmost of the three. I ended up driving up Mt. Raupehu to the Whakapapa Skifield (pictured above, sort of…), which was (according to my handy NZ atlas, thanks Patty’s dad!) the set for Mordor and Emyn Muil in the LoTR films. Obviously I couldn’t see anything (and it was 2 C/35 F and raining), and sadly Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom in LoTR) was completely obscured. Oh well, a good reason to come back I guess (not to mention the entire South Island!).

Despite the failure of that journey, I felt a little better that I at least went to have a look - why come all the way here if I’m not going to at least try right!? But ultimately I decided I did not want to go hiking in freezing rain with no hope of seeing anything pretty…So I headed back to Turangi, just north of the National Park, to walk along the Tongariro River. 

This turned out to be a really neat walk! A long stretch of it went literally RIGHT next to a farm, so I got right up close to some sheep (and cows). There was another rainbow over the whole farm too, although this seems to be a daily occurrence at this point (probably because it rains every day…). Actually I’ve been trying to figure out why rainbows always appear as arcs…maybe someone can help me out here? I mean, in principle, it’s just light passing through water droplets right? So shouldn’t we just see a massive sky full of rainbow if it’s cloudy? My guess is that it has to be a particular angle of incidence or something, and that the earth’s curvature is responsible for the arc shape…but that’s just a guess. I want to know (and hopefully this isn’t something they told us in 2nd grade that I’ve just forgotten…).

Anyway, great walk! That was pretty much it for the day. The walk took close to 4 hours, and since I had spent the whole morning driving around Tongariro Nat’l Park, it was almost 4:30 when I finished (remember that it gets dark around 5…). So I got on the road back to Taupo, stopping a couple of times to take pictures of the sun setting over the lake. I was pretty worn out by this point, but I still decided to walk into town to get online for a little bit and then get a kebab for dinner. And that was the end of the day (once I walked back to the hotel!)

June 7 - Even more success today, sleeping until almost 8AM! You may be wondering why I wasn’t up super early to do my long hike. Unfortunately the group I booked with has canceled all of the “expeditions” through Saturday due to a storm up in the mountains, so I’m not going to get to do it. I actually knew this yesterday, since I had to call in to confirm pickup, but I thought there was still some hope for doing it Friday or Saturday, but no (as I found out about 2:30PM today).

Not to be deterred, I headed into town a little after 8 for the all important cup of coffee. Found a great place which I will definitely be going back to tomorrow, and then swung by the information center since I actually had no idea how to get to the things I wanted to see! Map in hand, I got on the road for Craters of the Moon, which is a “area of thermal activity”.

At first glance it didn’t look like much, just a big field of bushes with random patches of smoke coming out of it (and a foul smell). But the paths as you go around take you right up to the craters, some even with bubbling mud in them. Walking amidst the smoke right next to these big craters was pretty dramatic, and there was a climb to the top of a hill that gave a nice scenic overlook of Taupo.

After that I headed to Huka Falls (Huka means ‘foam’ in Mauri), which is (according to some sign I saw) the most visited natural attraction in New Zealand. This was a very different waterfall than any I had seen before. For one, the drop is only 9m, which you wouldn’t think would be all that exciting (anyone in the Dieter family remember Idaho Falls?). BUT, the water comes out of a very wide river (again, I think this is the Waikato – either the Waikato is massive, or I’m just assuming everything is the Waikato…), and gets channeled into a progressively narrower chute right before the falls. This makes the water go very fast and flow with great turbulence (I think, Blair will tell me if I’m wrong :p ). And, you guessed it, makes it really foamy (really nice color actually, see above).

There was also a nice walk along the Waikato which took about an hour each way. The park at the end was pretty boring (literally just a giant field), but the walk itself was very nice and gave some good views of the river. Once I got back to the parking lot I called again to check on my hike, which is when I found out they were canceling Friday and Saturday as well…bummer.

Anyway, it was about 3 by this point, and I had failed to eat anything, but I still had one more stop before going back to town! I went to the “Huka Hive,” which the guidebook had recommended, but it turned out to just be a store that sells honey related products. There were a few panels telling me about bees which were actually pretty interesting. For example, apparently each hive starts out with 5 or 6 potential queen bee eggs, and then whichever one hatches first kills all the other ones! And if two happen to hatch at once, they obviously have to fight to the death. Seems like a bad system (and I guess all the honey bees are dying off, right?). Anyway, I got some honey ice cream (since my mom had read that this was a NZ specialty, and since I needed lunch…), and narrowly resisted buying a honey beer that they brewed (since I still have some work to do on the bottle of wine). Actually in retrospect, I think I may go back and get that…I have a few nights still in NZ to finish it!

By now I had walked probably 8 or 9 miles, so why not tack on a few more! I drove back to the hotel and then walked into town, trying to plan my day for tomorrow. Even though the weather is bad in the mountains, it should still be OK to do other hikes in the national park (according to the information people), so I think that’s the plan. I wandered around various shops and such for a bit, and finally at 5 just wanted to sit down and eat! So I found a bar that had fish and chips, and finally had that (very good!). They don’t seem to be big on any sort of craft beer here. Yesterday I had “Waikato Draught” which tasted exactly like Heineken. I forget the name of what I had tonight, but it was sort of like a Killian’s. Oh well, score one for America!

June 6 - I managed to sleep until 6AM – moving in the right direction! Seemingly everything in Hamilton was closed, but I finally managed to get some coffee at a café that turned out to be affiliated with the Casino (which appeared to be a serious operation!). I got on the road to the Waitomo Caves (about an hour’s drive), stopping at one point to get the photo of the rainbow you see above!

Being mildly afraid of caves, I obviously decided that the best option was to buy tickets to all three. This was enough of a tourist operation that I wasn’t too worried (it turned out the ‘bushwalk’ had much scarier caves than the caves!). My first tour was the Raukuri Cave. Raukuri means “two dogs” in Mauri, because the cave was originally discovered by a Mauri hunter who tracked a pack of dogs to the cave entrance (I think the dogs also may have attacked him, but I can’t remember exactly). This is also apparently the only handicap accessible cave in the southern hemisphere. They’ve built a rather elaborate ramp which descends 50 meters at the entrance – if you’ve ever played Goldeneye for N64, think of that part in the caverns multiplayer level, except a tighter spiral (probably 8-10 full loops around to get down the whole way).

In retrospect Raukuri was the least interesting of the three, though it was still a nice tour. After lunch I did a tour of Aranui, which had much more spectacular features. There were also these super creepy insects that live in the cave entrance – I can’t remember the name, but it translates to something like “spiny thing,” which pretty succinctly sums it up. Apparently the ones we saw were about 1/3 the size of the biggest ones, which makes me never want to go back!

Before heading over to Waitomo (which, in that amazingly succinct Mauri way, translates to ‘water hole’), I decided to do the 30 minute ‘bushwalk’ (i.e. hike) around Aranui Cave. This was very cool, it felt like walking through a jungle (maybe it is a temperate rainforest?). However, at several points it involved walking through mini “caves” which was not cool – one I practically had to crawl through, though thankfully I could see the other side and it was not very far. Eventually the trail takes you to the entrance where the Waikato River (I think) rushes into the cave, which is a really neat sight – you can really appreciate how the cave got dug out, that water is really moving!

OK, finally onto the main attraction, the Glowworm Cave! After having just seen two other caves, there was nothing really spectacular about the cave formations themselves – basically it’s just a giant empty room. They apparently have concerts in there sometimes – actually, there was a school group right ahead of us, and they sang a song to test out the acoustics. But, after the brief cave tour, they put you on a boat in the pitch dark to go see the glowworms. Might as well be honest, this was a little nerve racking. Let me remind you that it is quite dark by this “dock” – I think there was one tiny light. Suddenly these boats would appear out of nowhere, not anchored or anything, just held to the dock by the operator while people loaded. Then the boat would push off and completely disappear into the darkness within a few feet. How the boat was propelled, or where it went, I could not figure out until the very end (pretty cool actually, the operator stands on the front of the boat and grabs a series of overhead ropes to pull the boat along). Anyway, there were hundreds of glowworms on the cave ceiling, which was a pretty neat sight.

By this point it was about 4 or so, and time to get on the road to Taupo (about 2 hour’s drive). Mom, you may want to stop reading at this point. This was quite possibly the most harrowing drive of my life. The first hour was great – beautiful scenery, fun windy roads. However, at about 5PM, it 1) got really dark, because it’s the damn winter (almost) over here, and 2) started raining like I don’t think I have ever seen before. Keep in mind at this point I am absolutely in the middle of nowhere (I doubt I saw more than 20 cars between 4:30 and 6PM), driving on the left side of the road, and, as mentioned before, on windy roads (though not as much fun as before the dark and rain!). Anyway, since I had promised many of you before I left, I did not die, and eventually made it to the Great Lake (they call it Great Lake Taupo). Best part was, my hotel is about a mile from town, and I was hungry…so I had to get back in the car! I got some dinner, also got a bottle of wine from town (the guy said New Zealand is becoming known for it’s Pinot Noir and recommended a bottle…I don’t know anything about wine but I like it!), and then called it a night!