Wellington and VOLCANOES!

It is a strange feeling to be moving slowly, slowly, closer to home and to yet still be so far away from it both in terms of time and space. Still, Wellington was a very refreshing change from Queenstown - unpretentious, laid back and very good fun. I had only planned to stay here for a couple of days but ended up staying for five - although this may partly have been due to bus prices...

Most notably, the city is covered in Lord of the Rings references - from the airport arrivals hall to the enormous and excellent Te Papa National Museum.

Upon my arrival, I was confronted with hordes of very drunk 16-year olds occupying the hostel and the entire waterfront where it was situated. I had arrived on the day of the Homegrown festival, which appears to attract a younger crowd who are still very keen to get as drunk as they physically can: the number of people who begged me to buy them booze when I went for an exploratory wander was astounding. While I am normally happy to help in these situations, I had to decline due to the police presence anticipating exactly this problem.

Still, the pedestrian malls lined with cafes and second-hand bookstores and other fun shops were a delight to wander along, and sometimes even sit down at (a rare pleasure when under severe budgetary constraints). An early highlight, though, came in the form of the Newtown Street Fair, an annual event I was lucky enough to come across.

Not sure if this guy was selling anything or showing off this mother of all oldschool bikes - either way, he'd be a great addition to the streets of Cambridge!

This was a standard arts-and-crafts type fair occupying some 10 streets in the city centre, with the subtle difference that there were several stages scattered throughout the area playing not washed-out oldies but live reggae and, in one particular case (bottom right), some pretty raw dubstep and even tekno. Since this attracted a sizeable crowd - not necessarily a given at a "child-friendly" day out - I could not resist a little dance here. Great way to pass the afternoon!

My best find, though, was this fantastic guidebook to a place that I had not expected to have a guidebook - and for just a dollar, too. Lonely Planet really do do it all...

Apart from this, my time in Wellington was mostly spent wandering more or less aimlessly and discovering a few pretty spots and odds and ends. The lack of any particularly outstanding events makes it a bit tricky writing about these few days; it is mostly the genuine, pleasant atmosphere of the whole city that made it such a pleasure to linger here. I did, notably, miss out on a pod of killer whales swimming into the harbour and spending about an hour messing about at the harbour wall; a stall owner told me about it when I wandered past the next morning.

Can't be too safe...

Once the time came to leave Wellington, however, I was excited to get stuck into my next bigger trek: the Tongariro Northern Circuit is a 4-day hike through Tongariro National Park, home to three of the last 100 years' most active volcanoes worldwide: Mts Tongariro (1500-odd m), Ngauruhoe (~2200m, better known as Mount Doom) and Ruapehu (~2800m).

While many Lord of the Rings locations, which are dotted around both islands, are almost indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape to the untrained eye now the sets have been removed, Ngauruhoe is immediately apparent as the fiery mountain it was in the movies. The first day's walk was a short affair through shrublands and up towards the saddle between two of the volcanoes:

My first campsite - Mt Ngauruhoe/Mt Doom in the background.

Here, at Mangatepopo Hut, I was treated to a fantastic sunset that lit up a mountain on the horizon in an ominous orange glow really quite reminiscent of Mordor.

I also got a little carried away upon discovering an orange blob high up on the flank of this mountain after the sunset had set, thinking it might actually be a lava flow. This was, of course, wrong and the culprit was just a reflection, but maybe the photo below, showing the irregular shape of the reflection, will go some way towards explaining...

Either way, it was the next day that proved to be the toughest in terms of walking. The ascent of 700m from 1200 to just below 1900m doesn't sound impressive in terms of numbers, but add a 20kg pack, annoying gravel which meant that each step involved sliding back down at least half the distance covered, and shoes entirely unsuitable for said gravel explain why I did break a very considerable sweat. Still, the effort was well worth it: as I climbed the saddle between Ngauruhoe and Tongariro volcanoes, plants grew scarce and then disappeared completely, to be replaced by rocky outcrops, old pyroclastic and lava flows and plains of ash.

New Zealand keeping it classy - an outhouse in Mordor...

One of Ngauruhoe's flanks, braved by a few hardy climbers willing to take on the one-step-forward-two-steps-back nature of 700 vertical metres of gravel and ash...

The high point of the track is reached at the Red Crater, at 1886m. The name is fairly self-explanatory, and also descriptive:

Fumaroles and their sulphurous fumes provide a heady scent of rotten eggs.

An old magma conduit(?), exposed by an eruption at the Red Crater.

At long last, a descent - but as it turns out the only thing more infuriating than climbing up a fine, gravelly slope is descending one. Following several breaks to empty my shoes of ash and debris and a few near-misses, though, I made it down to the tranquil-seeming Emerald Lakes...

...to be greeted by an ominous warning:

Naturally, I had to stop now and again...too much scenery to admire!

An eruption took place here in August 2012 and destroyed part of a path branching off nearby; the possibility of further activity is very real.

Finally, after circumambulating the Emerald Lakes, the real, actual Mordor opens up ahead. As mentioned earlier, there is no need for a guidebook to tell you it's there; it looks exactly like it did in the movies, so much so that one almost wonders where all the Orcs have gone. The blue sky dotted with benign white clouds looks bizarrely out-of-place here.

Mordor took another couple of hours or so to cross, and I arrived at Otutere Hut a little overwhelmed by all the epic-ness I had just been bombarded with. The day wasn't quite finished with me yet, though - just near the hut I found a beauty of a waterfall tumbling down some 20 metres through and into lush greenery - straight out of the desolate plain I had just emerged from. Sunrise the next morning provided spot-on perfect lighting for it...

...and also for Mt Doom: the hut warden suggested I get up for 6.30am when the tip of the volcano is bathed in a red glow while the rest still lies in darkness. He was not wrong...

Mt Ruapehu also came out nicely...

The last two days provided a more tranquil wander through what started out as an ash desert and slowly mutated back into more verdant tundra-like shrubland punctuated by forests and the odd stream...

...and finished at the Taranaki Falls just outside the sleepy village of Whakapapa.

Phew! Bit of a marathon post, this - but hopefully the many photos make up for it...

The next one will probably be about the Cook Islands as my last days in New Zealand seem to be caught up with preparing for them as well as for Japan - I am only just starting to realise just how bewildering that country will be after all the anglophone countries I have been cruising through!

Into a Land Far Far Away

The recent lack of posts stems not from laziness or lack of inspiration but from quite the opposite. Since arriving in New Zealand I have spent most of my waking hours gawking at the world around me, not quite comprehending the amount of natural beauty packed into one small country. And we're not talking isolated pretty spots here and there; we're talking full-on stunning pretty much anywhere the eye falls.

This has made hitchhiking a boundless joy, not only because I have met people ranging from weird to wonderful to both but also because wherever I have been dropped off I've been more than happy to just sit for a while and enjoy whatever new delight the countryside threw at me. But more on hitchhiking adventures in a little while...

I arrived into Christchurch, written off by many travellers (and Kiwis, for that matter) as not worth visiting because the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 left it in a state of devastation. Indeed, destruction is widespread - but being shown around by my most excellent couchsurfing host Mike, who'd grown up here and returned recently after living in Cairns for a while, I got to see the amazing, often brilliantly quirky, rebuilding and beautifying efforts of the hardy local population (only 10% of them left after an earthquake that destroyed most of the city's vitals!). This was not only apparent in the ongoing rescue of many old buildings and lots of pointy, pretty roofs lying on the ground after being hoisted down with cranes to prevent collapse, but also in the city's main shopping avenue. Most of the buildings lining it having collapsed, a new set of shops has opened up - all in stacks of containers. These aren't ugly building-site containers, though - these were beautifully and often artfully painted, cheery and generally very fun, filled as they were with young people having a good time. If I had the right camera with me as I write this, I would post photos of all this to convey a better image but for now, words will have to do.

The next day, Mike drove me and Kirk, a Texan couchsurfer who'd gotten stranded in ChCh after missing a bus, out to the Banks Peninsula. This is an area of scarce human habitation by European standards and consists mostly of low hills and a stunning bay with a narrow spit of land jutting out into it; this was our destination. What struck me most is the incredible intensity of the colours - in winter this area is lush and green but we found it drier and so golden colours prevailed and contrasted beautifully with the azure sea. Having someone to drive me around here who knew the place and was good company was brilliant as the place is rather too big to get around otherwise, and thankfully tourist buses don't yet seem to have this area as overrun as many others.

All that said, the famous adage that a picture says more than a thousand words rings particularly true here, so here's a few thousand words' worth...

On the drive out.

Banks Peninsula with Okawe jutting out into the bay, connected to the mainland by a very narrow strip of land.

En route onto Okawe. Crazy things going on with the colour of the water, probably sediment-related(?).

 

Kirk, myself and Mike on Okawe.

On the whole, Christchurch proved thoroughly enjoyable not least because having a knowledgeable host makes all the difference. Nevertheless, I headed off northwards in high spirits, about to embark on my first bit of hitchhiking. The day went well and I never had to wait more than about half an hour, despite taking four different rides. This included the coach of Canterbury (county) Cricket who ranted about his batsman(?) being injured, a Presbyterian church admin guy and one gentleman who seemed pretty seriously into his medieval re-enactment: he had a full suit of armour and a sword in the back of his van and talked excitedly about the jousting world championships. Had I only known earlier that such a thing existed...!

Anyway, each of these could only take me a short distance before our paths diverged, and it was my fourth ride who took me the remaining 200-ish miles to Nelson. This older (~70-80) gentleman drove a very shiny red muscle car with a 6-litre, 350-horsepower engine, and he drove it aggressively. He was very quiet at first but turned out to be a bit of an adventurer - he had worked in the Canadian oil fields and was a hobby pilot and touring car racer. Given this background and that he handled the car with supreme confidence even at high speeds (we hit >140mph/220kmh a few times, a nail-biting affair on New Zealand's winding roads...), I was comfortable enough despite the fact that he was missing a thumb for reasons he did not elaborate.

On the whole, I was very happy in his car until he started getting rather racist. And not that almost forgivable kind of old-people-racist which one tends to overlook because they are often so set in their ways, but really offensively racist; I kept my mouth shut because he was, after all, driving me all the way to Nelson and he did it fast, but it wasn't easy.

Nelson itself was very pleasant, a small coastal town on the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island and located near the Abel Tasman National Park, where I was going hiking for the next few days. Before, though, I had to procure a tent, sleeping bag and mat - cue a day's hectic running around between the town's various outdoors shops trying to find the cheapest items. In the evening, I found the time to nip up to the "Centre of New Zealand" on a nearby hill. This is not, as one might assume, the geographical centre of the country, but simply the point from which the first official survey of the country was carried out. Still, it was a pretty and serene spot and my ascent was accompanied by some pretty dramatic Tchaikovsky from a nearby open-air concert.

Looking inland from Nelson's Centre of New Zealand.

Early the next morning, I shouldered an uncomfortably heavy bag to set off for Abel Tasman National Park the next morning. The Abel Tasman Coast Track is one of New Zealand's nine Great Walks - in a country full of gorgeous hiking trails, that's saying something - and is dominated by lush temperate rainforests interspersed with outrageously golden beaches leading, as always, to perfect blue water.

Crossing the tidal flat which marks the beginning of the Coast Track - some tourists opted for horse rides instead, making for a Lord of the Rings-esque scene.

One of many stunning views from outcrops along the walk...can't see myself tiring of this!

The weight of my pack soon caught up with me, though, and I thoroughly regretted my decision to do the track in just 48 hours. Besides messing up my hipflexor with my backpack's waist strap, I also gave up the option of ambling along one of the many beautiful side tracks or just hanging around at a random beach for a quick break. The hipflexor, in fact, became painful enough by the end of day 2 - 44 of 54 km done - that I decided to call it a day and catch the bus home from there instead of risking more serious injury. After all, there is plenty more of New Zealand that I would like to explore on foot!

To finish off this one, just a few more from Abel Tasman - I figured I'd cover New Zealand in smallish chunks in the hope that my gushing about the beauty of the place will be less trying if it comes in several smaller episodes...

All of New Zealand's lakes and rivers are incredibly clear - kayaking almost feels like gliding on nothing. But more on that next time...

...and even the sea displays colours I've rarely seen before!