Monday, March 25, 2013

DAMNIT!!!! I forgot the ring!

I'm a few days into a vacation on the north island of New Zealand and I've been keeping pretty busy. Outside of a quick stop off in Auckland for a round of golf, I spent the next two days surrounded in the lands of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I got a taste of in last year on the south island, but I went full on this time.
I drove about an hour south of Auckland to Matamata to Hobbiton. This is basically where the hobbits live. When they filmed the Lord of the Rings, they built the set out of polystyrene with the full intent to tear it down a d return the land to its owners exactly how they got it. Which was the contract. When they rebuilt the set for the Hobbit, the owner said it had to be built our of building materials (bricks, woods, etc) and had to remain after production wrapped. Because of this, you can visit exactly what it was like in the movies. And I must say, it's pretty cool.




















Everything is there from Bag End to the fake tree above it, to the massive part tree. They even rebuilt a full scale working Green Dragon. Where they make 2 beers exclusively for there.








The next day I spent 8 hours hiking the Tongariro Crossing which is rated as one of New Zealand's best hikes. Normally it goes from point A to point B, but because one of the volcanos erupted in November, they changed the route and made it into a there and back. I made a mistake which resulted in a hellish backtrack. But more on that later.
This area was used as Mordor and Mount Doom in the movies. As you can see from the pics, it's a pretty good location for it..








It was about a 3 hour hike to the Emereld Lakes where you we're told to stop if you were a day hiker. However,the guy behind the desk where I was staying said you could make it to Blue Lake. A part they just opened after the eruption. So I couldn't not go.








These two are of the Emerald Lakes. Very nice and descriptive.




This is Blue Lake. It should have been more blue based on my return trek. That's is steam rising from a volcano in the back. Not a cloud.
I apparently have a pic on my phone, so I'll have to post that later. Trust me, it sucked.
So I got back to the second point, hurting and tired wondered when I'd have the chance to climb Mount Doom again. Labeled as difficult and a 3 hour side trip I figured I'd give my self one hour up to see how far I could get. Let's just say I was unprepared. Both physically and without the right equipment. Again, this is volcano from a distance.




This is the volcano from the base.




Seems doable, right. You can see three rock ridges to left of the lava tracks. I made it to the top of the one on the far left. My legs were screaming at that point and I knew I was over my head when I was looking almost vertically up to the summit. There wasn't a specific path and I am not experienced enough to choose the easiest. I had to put my camera away at this point because I was worried about falling (or rather rolling down a volcano.)
This was the last pic I took before putting the camera away. The left are the rock ridges where I turned back.




This in the volcano from the parking lot to see just how high it was.




I made it half way. With another day I would have gone back with fresher legs, but still worth it.
Today I played some more golf and went white water rafting. The river includes the highest commercially rafter waterfall anywhere at 7 meters. And it was a blast, but more on that later. I'm hungry and need another beer.

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