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| Hamilton temple |
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| Lake Taupo - just outside our condo. This region has lots of geothermal activity, with hot water being marked by signs that say things like "CAUTION: scalding hot water." You can see the steam as it flows into the lake. |
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| Huka Falls. You don't get a great grasp of scale here, but it was massive and beautiful. |
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| That should provide scale. In the middle towards the top you can see people standing on the other side of the falls - that should help with size. |
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| About an hour in on our 6 hour hike. That's a volcano. Mt. Ng.... (not sure the rest of it). Note the scenery - looks like we were on Mars. Felt that way for about 4.5 hours of the hike. We've never seen anything like it. |
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| Same volcano - look how much we've ascended. (Our FitBits showed that we went did 373 flights of stairs on the hike. This picture is shortly after the devil's staircase which did, indeed, feel like Hades. Today - day after - does too.) |
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| After even more of an ascent. This was crazy windy and cold. They added "arctic" to the hike name, and this section of the hike is why. Cool views but crazy desolate. |
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| Emerald pools. Their colors were striking. They are sulphur pools so smelled terrible. |
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| Just before doing the descent, where we held hands with a nice lady named Jo from the UK that was shaking with fear. It was a long ways down. |
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| Our car is parked WAY at the bottom of this. Loved the view of trees and lakes after so much brown, red, black and empty. |
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| And then - surprise - the last 90 minutes was through a jungle. My cheeks are rosy: the sun had come out and I was down to only 3 layers at this point. :) |
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| More of the jungle on our hike. Huge difference in setting. |
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| Our breakfast this morning! TJ made strawberry jam using the sugar packets for the coffee. :) We had french toast and scrambled eggs, made in that tiny kitchen in the background. |
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| New Zealand is gorgeous. This is Lake Taupo - our condo is on the other side of the lake. |
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| We've been trying to figure these forests out. We've come to the conclusion that they are planted for lumber. We call them "The Forbidden Forest" because they are incredibly dense and dark. |
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| Just an idea of how stunning New Zealand is. We thought this looked a lot like Toon Town. :) Rolling green like we've never seen. I've never enjoyed driving so much. We truly went from our lake front property to complete jungle within 12 minutes yesterday. |
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| Redwood Forest today - this is my favorite thing we've done so far. Walked for about an hour. It was so peaceful. I absolutely loved it. |
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| Can you see T? |
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| We were trying hard to show how BIG these trees are. |
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| Holy gorgeous. |
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| Rode a gondola up to the top of the mountain to ride the luge. That view was great. The water was super blue. Loved it. |
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| TJ riding up the chairlift after taking the "Advanced" luge track down. He caught air, which delighted him. :) I, of course, was reading in the sunshine while he went. Perfect for both of us. |
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| Before we rode the luge together. I screamed with delight on the way down. :) |
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| The luge - |
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| :) Well, we had a few minutes to burn. Where would you choose? |
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| The Rotorua Library is now TJ's favorite library ever. |
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| TJ looked for a great restaurant in Rotorua and we went here for lunch. I fell so deeply in love that we also went here for dinner. And two desserts. It was fabulous. |
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| Can't get over that treeline. The cows make it pretty picturesque too. |
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| Sunset on Lake Taupo, just as we arrived home for the day. Note the black goose in the foreground - they are everywhere. We still haven't gotten over all the beautiful bird sounds. |
