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Wellington, New Zealand
Wellington is a four-hour drive south of Tongariro National Park, which is where we woke up on Christmas Eve. For most of the drive, we passed through beautiful countryside and farmland, spotting cattle, sheep, goat, alpaca, deer, and horse farms. We popped in at a small café in the tiniest little town you can imagine—“Bulls,” which made every effort possible to make a pun about cattle (“this café is unbelieva-BULL”). After lunch, our car zoomed across several smaller mountainsides and eventually wound its way to the West Coast, where I shouted in glee upon seeing the Tasman Sea, which spans between Western New Zealand and Australia. About an hour from…
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Tongariro National Park
Tongariro National Park is situated about an hour’s drive south of Lake Taupo, and is home to three famous volcanoes: Mount Tongariro, the smallest; Mount Ruapehu, the largest; and Mount Ngauruhoe (arguably the most famous, since it served as Peter Jackson’s “Mount Doom” in the Lord of the Rings films). These three mountains are hugely important to the Maori people.
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Lake Taupo, New Zealand
We left Waitomo bright and early on the 7th morning, eager to reach Lake Taupo before noon. Lake Taupo is a spectacular, massive lake, much bigger than Lake Rotorua, which we’d seen earlier in the trip. It’s the largest lake in New Zealand, known formally as “Great Lake Taupo,” and as we learned that day, it was formerly a supervolcano. Several thousand years ago, a supervolcano erupted, leaving a large, cauldron-like depression in the ground called a caldera. Lake Taupo formed in that caldera. Because of the volcanic activity surrounding the lake, there are several hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the lake (360ft below) that make the temperature of…
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Stars Above the Water: Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
They were the titiwai, or “stars above the waters,” as the Maori call them. Seeing the titiwai felt like lying on the grass on a pitch-black night in the middle of nowhere, staring up at the stars above.
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Rotorua, New Zealand
In the morning, we woke up early and drove straight to Rotorua—a lakeside town about an hour inland from the coast. Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity, as the town sits on the caldera of a massive volcano that last erupted several thousand years ago. This volcanic activity makes the region home to several geysers, geothermal hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and sulphuric gas. And let me tell you—that sulphur smell is extremely strong. Our clothes likely still smell like rotten eggs, and it’s impossible to get used to that stench. Rotorua is also famous for its Maori culture, as the city is one of the first places the…
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Tauranga/Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
As we climbed, Matt and I heard thunder over the ocean, and a rainstorm immediately poured down on us. The foliage, however, was so dense and thick with ferns, palm trees, pohutukawa trees, and other greenery, that we barely felt the rain.
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Cathedral Cove, New Zealand
Cathedral Cove is a naturally formed archway in the middle of a beautiful stretch of the Pacific coast. In Maori (the language of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand,) Cathedral Cove is known as Te Whanganui-A-Hei.
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Auckland, New Zealand
It is 7pm on Saturday and I am doing everything I can to keep my eyes open. Our total travel time from Nashville to Auckland was 25 hours, including a grueling 14-hour flight from LAX to Auckland. Matt and I were both really dreading such a long flight, especially since our seats weren’t together! After we’d settled into the plane, however, the kindest man sitting beside me offered to switch seats with Matt so we could “honeymoon together.” We will always remember his generosity! Once we landed in Auckland, we grabbed our rental car and faced the biggest challenge of our trip so far: driving on the other side of…
