We’re in the hobbit, I mean habit of calling these Mountains Mount Doom, collectively. From our beloved Peter Jackson films, Lord of the rings. Mt Ngauruhoe is sacred to the Maori, so filming the mountain was not permitted so they had to use scale models of Mt Ngauruhoe. However, some filming was carried out on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu. So Mark and I made our way up Mt Ruapehu as other Hobbits had done before us. In a chairlift of course. Well the chairlift was just to get us…read more
So after a few days in Rotorua, we headed south for the Waitomo caves. MOAR GLOW WORMS!! We did enjoy ourselves on this tour but found that it wasn’t as good as the night before on the lake and it’s really no surprise, you can’t compare a private tour with one surrounded by 30 other tourists. So we actually visited two caves, Ruakuri and the Waitomo glow worm cave. Ruakuri cave was big and made us cold and gave us sore feet, but it was beautiful. Here, look: The glow…read more
MUDPOOLS Sorry folks, no pictures of the mud baths, our cameras may be splash proof from water, but I didn’t count on them being mud proof. Besides, we were both covered in mud so we would have blended in anyway. The mud baths were fun and they were the same wild geothermal pools bubbling up from the ground as they were before Europeans took over and surrounded each pool with concrete for visitors access. Regardless of feeling that we were in a faux geothermal pool, we still had fun. It…read more
