Kia Ora! And other overdue greetings from the land of the long white cloud...

I realize that a lot of my New Zealand travels are filled with a lot of little stops going from point A to point B, and not enough to really do a full blog on.  So I’d rather share it in it’s small bits and pieces with you... plus, I'm way behind on my posts.  Bear with me...

BRIDAL VEIL FALL

The silver fern of New Zealand (nearly national symbol and logo is decorated with their fern)

ROTTEN EGGS ROTORUA

While there briefly, we got the idea of how this town is so popular due to the Maori tribes located there along with the omnipresent geothermal mud pools… and it smells like steamy, rotten eggs.  Several of the girls went to Hells Gate where they soaked in the boiling mud baths there which are said to have medicinal properties.  Ok, I didn't go because frankly, I was being a cheapskate and didn't want to pay to go sit in something that smelled like rotten eggs.  Though I did go to some geothermal pools (with water only) that were free in a park in Taupo and I found it to be just as pleasant (and did I mention free?) in the freezing cold air... and rain.

Here are some pictures of the geothermal mud pools that can often been found around Rotorua.  Super cool to check these out live as the mud is sort of a grey-silvery liquefied mud just boiling away… 

TONGARIRO NATIONAL PARK

Another stop was at the Tongariro National Park that many people might recognize from the Lord of things films as Mt. Doom, except while we were there, it was covered in snow… so no lava… and no all-seeing eye, Modor sort of thing going on.  I found that while New Zealand is no doubt one gorgeous country and Lord of the Rings really helped put a lot of these gorgeous locations on the map for tourism, a lot was still done through movie magic… so while witnessing this beauty is one thing, I still wanted the movie magic version with all of it’s ambiance and exoticism and wild creatures…. of course – a realistic expectation.  Tongariro’s three mountains are spectacular!  My German friend, Sonja, and I went on a nice hike through the area before it and it’s not hard to imagine scenes from LOTR being played out there.  Everywhere you look, it always seems to be a location that could have been used for the movies.  This is truly beautiful country...

 A BIT OF RANDOM

More to come...