Just before New Year, we made it to New Zealand. We started out in Auckland, NZ's largest city, where met up with our friend Malli who had made the 40-hour journey directly from Denmark to travel around NZ with us for three weeks. We got to enter 2020 twelve hours before our friends and family back in Denmark and after a few days of rest and preparing, we finally hit the road in our rented Toyota Corolla.
New Year's Eve in Auckland
Our first stop was Coromandel, a green, mountainous peninsula surrounded by an emerald sea and it did not take us long to find some good hikes. First, a sunset climb up a thousand stairs to warm up our legs for our long hike the following day to The Pinnacles. A five hour roundtrip, the last hour to the top went from windswept stairs to rocks, ladders and metal bolts for a final climb to the summit. The wind almost blew us away but type 2 fun easily turns into type 1 when the view is that great.
Sunset hike
It was very windy going up to The Pinnacles...
...but the view was pretty amazing
Having an apple on the top
Going back down
I take trail and weather conditions very seriously
Further up the peninsula, we followed the coastline through fairytale-like scenery. Creamy, turquoise water to the left, cow-covered, rolling hills to the right and trees above us with branches as winding as the road. Coming down the east coast, we stopped at Te Whanganui-A-Hei Marine Reserve or Cathedral Cove: A beach decorated with white rock in majestic shapes. Understandably a very crowded place though most people stayed on the dry sand leaving me happily lonesome in the clear, fresh water (of course "fresh" is a nice word for "cold").
Cathedral Cove
I just had to touch it
Now, even though Malli and I are passionate potterheads, we had to visit Hobbiton where they filmed parts of the Lord of the Rings-trilogy (it would not be our last time going to such a place on this trip). We do share a love for hobbits, elves and dwarfs as well as witches and wizards and we had a fun morning playing around in the sunny, green hills that make up The Shire. We managed to sneak away from our group to take some photos without too many people in them. The tour finished before noon with complimentary beer and cider at The Green Dragon. Leaving the hilly home of hobbits, we drove west to the windy coastal town of Raglan. So windy in fact that we had to pack up our tent and sleep in the car. Nonetheless, we had a lovely time with a trip to the beach and a good cup of coffee in the afternoon followed by a round of the dearly missed Harry Potter Drinking Game (we had to return to our beloved Hogwarts) in the evening in our car.
Please notice that Malli is holding a ring
In front of Bag End
We had a lot of fun
Raglan
The black sand was quite magical
Next stop was Waitomo Glowworms Cave. It was a short and expensive experience but still an experience I would not be without. It looked like an underground starry sky. It also gave rise to a good laugh. Since you are not allowed to take pictures inside the cave, you get a few taken in front of a greenscreen before entering and I could just not take it seriously. Not wanting to spend fifty dollars on our three printed greenscreen photos, I managed to sneak a couple of pictures of them with my phone. Enjoy! (see photos below) From insect-eating turquoise worms to a creature that would probably eat those worms, we drove south to Tongariro National Park and made the small walk down to Gollum's Pool (properly known as Tawhei Falls). It is no coincidence that this place would be named after a Lord of the Rings character since Tongariro is home to Mt. Ngauruhoe, more widely known as Mt. Doom.
What an adventure... In front of a greenscreen
Malli was not impressed by my acting skills and honestly I understand why
Gollum's Pool
They really managed to get into character
The next morning, we got up before sunrise and caught a shuttle bus to the trailhead of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing as early as possible trying to avoid the worst crowds. Leaving our bus driver, Malli said "He's probably thinking: 'Thank God it's not me going up there!'". It was a cloudy, foggy morning and we could not even see Mt. Ngauruhoe most of the way up. Still, the landscape was beautiful and dramatic. Vertical cliffs, misty craters, red rock, emerald lakes, chemical fumes, alpine greenery. I felt spoiled and even though it was a tough hike, it was a lot of fun. 19,4 kilometers, 765 meters of ascend and 1126 meters of descends. Celebrating our feat at a cafe afterwards, I read about a guy who had completed the crossing in 1 hour and 25 minutes. I decided to google his name and a picture of our driver from that morning came up.
Following tradition
Mt. Doom indeed
And we made it
Finally, Mt. Ngauruhoe said hello
Going down on the other side
Then, it was time for our last stop on the North Island: Wellington, NZ's capital. We treated ourselves to a night in an Airbnb after a week of camping. Wellington is a lot smaller and a lot cozier than Auckland with cute coffeehouses, colorful people and endless thrift stores (I picked up a cheap Irving at a secondhand bookstore so I was a happy girl). In the evening, we saw the sun set over the green hills that make up the city from Mt. Victoria and got drinks and fries at the most perfect hipster bar where we began planning our route for the next stretch of our journey on the South Island.
Wellington from Mt. Victoria
Until next time
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