Wellington + LOTR!

Just got down to Wellington today and hopped off the bus onto another one - the LOTR tour bus! Was fantastic for my inner geek lol, went and visited various Rings related locations in Wellington, including the Weta Cave, part of Weta's complex in the city where they design and produce all their props and environments for movies!

Headed then to Victoria Peak where we checked out some of the places where they filmed in the movies - much fun! From there went to a lovely viewpoint and grabbed some nice photos of the city itself.

Been a long day and a tiring week, gonna be staying in Wellington for a few days to recharge - on the 1st of December shall be heading to the South Island, weee! Can't wait!

Tongariro Crossing

Well, just got back from the longest walk ever, turned out to be 19.2km over some fantastic mountains (including going past Mt Doom!), had such a great time but am really exhausted now! Am heading off to Wellington tomorrow and may stay there for a few days, watch this space!

Lake Taupo + National Park

Left Taupo yesterday after being very disappointed by the weather - we weren't able to skydive at all, which sucked! Went on a bit of a sailing trip instead and saw some lovely Maori carvings in the rockface, which was interesting at least.

Arrived today in Tongariro National Park to inclement weather (it pissed it down lol), but it cleared up enough for us to do a 2 hour walk and to get some stunning photos, woohoo! Tomorrow am doing the arduous Tongariro crossing - a 17km hike across some stunning mountain ranges, if the weather holds. Should be fun!

Mad update 2!

Ok so, following on from the previous post, have been touring around the North Island doing some excellent things! Headed first to Hahei, then went down to Maketu for an original Maori experience, then onto Rotorua, which did stink quite badly lol, sulphur is NICE...from there headed to Taupo where I am right now! Yay! Gonna be skydiving here soon hopefully, weather was too bad yesterday :<

Have been having SO much fun the past week, has been really great! Was totally the right call to leave Auckland when I did methinks!

Hope all is well back home

Mad update 1!

Right so this past week I have been touring around the north island with Stray, basically a travel company with it's own buses. SO much fun, met some really cool people and done some really cool things! We went to Cathedral Cove, as shown by the rather large hole in the rock and the stunning landscape photos....visited a hot water beach where you can dig a hole and enjoy some geothermal energy at its best...made some time for the bus mascot, hehe...and also learnt to surf, went hiking, went on a flying fox....ahhh the list is endless! I'll be putting more photos up here but check Facebook for all of them!

Rangitoto

, J

Had a little day trip to Rangitoto Island, which is a 600 year old volcano situated in Auckland harbour. Was beautiful weather and got some nice photots, as well as having a bit of a hike!

Have sorted my travel southbound, I'll be leaving Auckland on Monday, finally!

One Tree Hill

Once aptly named, until the locals took down the tree in 2002, this is probably the largest dormant volcano in the Auckland area, and offers some stunning views! The obelisk, albeit somewhat freemason-esque, gives the hill a real sense of individualism, because there are 46 other volcanoes in Auckland :D

First beautiful day we've had in a while too. Roll on summer!

November news

Thought it may well be time for a blog update, since life is too dull to blog much at the moment :<

To that end however, I left my job at Greenpeace today. It has been an interesting 6 weeks doing a job I'd never tried before, and I'm glad I did the job, but I'm ready for a change, be it a different job or FINALLY travelling further south than Auckland after 2 months away from home!

My final tally was 65 new members persuaded, cajoled, or guilt-tripped into joining up, a figure which I'm relatively happy with :D Plus I saved up enough money to see the whole country, which is good!

So blogwise, hopefully something vaguely interesting to look at someday soon...I PROMISE!