Around The World Gaby and Gu 2006-2007

The Tongariro Crossing, New Zealand's most popular one-day-hike. Much longer than Mt Ruapehu's climb (17km against 8km) but much easier as well.

A view over Mt Ngauruhoe

Starting our hike !

Beautiful views of lava rocks !

Starting to climb, this is the most and only difficult part of the hike. Nothing compared to Mt Ruapehu :O)

There we are ! As of now, it's going to be pretty flat !

Enjoying the great view ! :O)

Even if this doesn't look like one, we are walking on a huge crater !

Mt Ngauruhoe in the background...a volcano like we've always imagined it...

A view from the crater we are walking on...

...and one more just because it looks impressive :O)

Now for the Lord of The Rings fans... THIS is Mordor !!

And Mt Ngauruhoe was used as Mt Doom in the movie !!

Baby and I in front of the amazing Red Crater. Thanks Stewart for taking the pic' :O)

The Red Crater's vent is the result of an eruption about 150 years ago...beautiful !

The Blue Lake in the distance...

...and the amazing three Emerald Lakes !

The Three of them are still active !

Interersting colours resulting of sulfurs activity

After a well deserved lunch we are starting our descent by walking on another large active crater...

All of this makes us feel like we are literally walking on the moon...

A water stream with Mt Ngauruhoe's beautiful crater in the distance

"The other side", the beginning of the end of the hike (even if we are only half way :O)

Can't help but taking pictures of this amazing crater !! :O)

Baby ready to get down !

This is our last break before arriving...still about 2hours

One more picture and let's go !

Well almost, let me take another picture of Baby in action ! :O)

Beautiful colors which will always remind us of New Zealand !

Really love them :O)

A hot spring owned by the Maori community

We are definitely back on earth :O)

We made it !! 17kms in 8h30 hours and lots of unforgettable landscapes of this amazing place !!

Mt Ruapehu, still an active volcano, in the beautiful Tongariro National Park

The start of our hike at approximately 1500m

Ok, let's go now !!

Such a sunny day for us but not for the rest of the country which is under the clouds

Mt Ruapehu is the largest ski area in New Zealand !

The boss at work :O)

It's a rocky and steep way but every step is more beautiful than the previous

We are walking on ash that is the result of the 1996 eruption of the volcano !!

We're starting to see the top !

Ok, now we're talking serious business here ! :O)

A fantastic view over Mt Ngauruhoe, the second of the three volcanos that form Tongariro National Park

Baby is suffering but she's doing a great job !

Beautiful rock formations !

A break as we are getting closer and closer to the top !

The contrast between the ice and the color of the rock is quite beautiful!

The more ice we can see, the closer to the top it means we are ;o)

My baby, always with a smile on her face !

Mt Tanaraki, another volcano, in the distance...

Wow, finally the top ! What an incredible crater we are about to walk on !

Walking on the crater on our way to the active crater lake on the other side. Top of the pictures you can see an emergency shelter we hope not to have to use :O)

Looking over my shoulder, we're almost past the first crater

Mt Ruapehu's top is also a glacier which is our path to the way down...

We are at 2590m above sea level on an active volcano. Unbelievable for us !

We can now see the second crater...

...here we are, the crater lake is beautiful. Unfortunately we can't go too close, since we're a bit short of time.

Stewart, our great guide, is informing us about incoming strong winds. which means we have to start our descent now.

On the way down through the glacier !

Back to 2000m, Baby, Stewart and myself ready for our lunch after a 6-hour walk !

The clouds have almost covered Whakapapa village at the bottom...what a perfect timing ! :O).

Baby ! You did it ! The end was hard but you can be so proud of yourself !

We couldn't hope for a better day than the one we've had ! Thank you Stewart for your patience !! Climbing Mt Ruapehu is for sure one of the highlights of our entire trip !

The Abel Tasman National Park, a beautiful place for seakayaking and hiking. We did both in our tour. A good choice if you are running out of time as we unfortunately did. It allowed to see quite a few things around the national park including cute seals, one of which was showing off trying to keep us off the island to protect its "harem" :O)

The Pancake Rocks are stacked limestone rocks that look like...pancakes. As far as we could read, it´s quite unclear how they formed but they are absolutely impressive. A nice stop on the west coast, since we needed a rest from our trip back to the north of the southern island. Our next destination is the Abel Tasman National Park !

The Franz Josef Glacier is a temperate glacier that extends over 12km and starts at 192m above sea level up to 3000m. I guess we went up to a 1000m in our exploration of this impressive "piece" of ice :O). What is surprising as well is its accessibility : Just park your car, have a 30 minutes walk and there you are enjoying a fantastic view of the glacier !! Highly recommended :O)

Pretty nice and lucky to have been here in Milford Sound, which is supposed to be the wettest place in New Zealand with an average of 6 meters of annual rainfall, on a dry day. We could see seals but unfortunately penguins and dolphins were not in a mood to come out and say hello. Anyway, a beautiful and very calm place for a boat cruise !!

Not only is Deer Park Height, a hill surrounding Queenstown, a beautiful place for Lamas (what are they doing in NZ:O), Deers, Buffalos, Pigs, Donkeys and many more to be fed by people, it is also a location of The Lord of The Rings : The Two Towers. The team spent about 4 weeks in this location and for the very fans you will recognize the rock from which Aragorn, pushed by an Orc, falls down to a river or the Remarkables (mountains) which were used as a background when Rohan refugees escape for a safer fortress (can't remember its name). And these are only a few of the many scenes that were filmed there... :O)

First of all, we didn´t take any of those pictures since we were on the speedboat when they were shot. Second thing is that we are only on four of these pictures, the rest are standard public pictures courtesy of The Shotover Jet Company. And last but not least...this thing ROCKS !!! A must-do for whoever is planning a trip to NZ and Queenstown one day. We liked it so much we did it twice !! (Thanks for the tip Nikki :O)

A month is a short time. That is why we have decided to stay an average of 2 days in each place we'll be visiting in the next days. We are therefore on a tight schedule leaving our beautiful Lake Tekapo to go to Queenstown for a high-adrenaline activity called Shotover Jet. But before that, we had the opportunity to have a look at Lake Pukaki, which blue colour is created by very fine rock particles from the surrounding glaciers. We also stopped at the Omarama Clay Cliffs, which get their sharp spires shape under the influence of rainfall.

It's another sunny day in Tekapo, yeah !! We are going to make the most out of it by first going on a hike to Mount John, a hill that surrounds all the area and then by spending a couple of hours on the lake on a nice and romantic private cruise on the only small boat that proposes tours :O). We continue to be completely in love with this place !! :O)

It's amazing what a clear day can do to your mood and to the landscapes around you. We left Akaroa in a rather desperated mood, hoping for some sun to lighten up our day...and fortunately that's exactly what happened on our way to Lake Tekapo. We arrived there around 15h00 leaving us enought time to prepare for a magnificient sunset with amazing views on the mountain ranges around us and great reflections on this beautiful turquoise lake. Tekapo was just supposed to be a stopover on our way to Queenstown but we liked this place so much that we decided to stay one more day ! An excellent decision we guess. Check by yourselves ;O)

Yes, Akaroa is potentially such a romantic place ! Potentially because if you go there and spend two days with bad weather like we had, it can spoil your whole stay in this lovely french concession located within what was once a volcano. We had a good time there anyway but why did the sun only appear when we were leaving !!! ;O)

Kaikoura, definitely the place to go for Whale, Dolphin and Albatross encounters !! An amazing experience with the dusky dolphins, a kind of shorter and very acrobatic type which is usually found in the southern hemisphere as we were told. The encounter was quite impressive since they are very sociable even though they are totally wild and nothing is done to attract them. They just come around the boat, let themselves flow onto the wave and don't hesitate to spin around to impress us :O). We were also lucky enough to see really huge albatrosses flying around the boat. Simply a fantastic bird !! Well, very recommended encounter unless you are prone to seasickness like a certain me !! (Gundi) :O)

On our way to the southern island, we thought it would be worth paying a forced (you have to get there to catch the ferry to the other island) visit to the capital. Wellington didn't quite meet our expectations. The city is OK but it seems pretty messy and dirty. Furthermore, there aren't that many things to do or see there except the excellent Te Papa National Museum. Well, we won't remember this city as one of the nicest we have seen.

Orakei Korako, The Hidden Valley, our last stop in the very geothermal area of Rotorua / Lake Taupo before heading to Wellington. Once again, we were amazed by all the fantastic silica terraces and geyser activity of this place, which generates amazing colours. That is definitely our favourite of all the ones we have visited these past days.