One Year Into The Unknown: Heading further south

Haere mai (welcome in Maori BTW)

I welcome you all to the newest edition of my blog. I have been in the wild the last few days and therefore I am a few days behind my usual post-rhythm. I dearly hope you forgive me! First and most important:

My thoughts are with the people of Christchurch!

So what have I been up since I last updated my blog? I have made my way to Rotorua and on to Taupo and even further to the Tongariro National park. I am currently close but not quite in the National park. I am at a place called the “Blue Duck Lodge” more about this place a little later.

I returned from my detour to the east coast and to catch the next stray bus southwards, I stayed overnight in Rotorua. I am glad I didn't stay there any longer. Why? Because essentially it sits on a giant volcano. You can spot steam rising to the sky everywhere in this city. You also get another strong indicator; the whole city smells like rotten eggs.

From there I went on to Taupo, which sits on an even bigger Volcano. It is on the edge of lake Taupo (622 square kilometers!!!) which happens to be the crater of a super Volcano. I also only stayed overnight since there is not really much to do here.. well that is not quite right. Actually there is lots to do. Things like Bungy-jumping, Skydiving, River rafting etc etc. If your in the mood for adventure activities, New Zealand seems the place to be. Since I didn't feel like killing myself in a spectacular way, I moved on to the National park.

I stayed 3 nights at the National park. What do you do at a National park? Well enjoy the scenery and go for hikes for starters. You can also do nothing at all, which I also chose to do (or not do). There is a really famous walk here that everybody does, the Tongariro Alpine crossing. It takes 6-7 hours to do it. No, I didn't do it. I did a few smaller walks ranging from 2 to 4 ½ hours. I think 4 ½ hours is quite enough for me. After that I get bored. I might do more down the line but that has to be seen. Funny fact for you: Every walking track in New Zealand seems to lead to a waterfall.

I really like the scenery at the National park. If you walk around here, you feel like you landed in Middle-earth! No coincidence then that the Volcano you can see on my pictures was actually Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies.

From the National park I went even further off the beaten track to the Blue Duck Lodge. This Lodge is literally in the middle of nowhere. It takes 1 ½ hours to get to the next settlement with a shop. What did I do here? Not much and I loved it! No Internet, no Cellphone reception and hardly anybody comes through here.

On a side note; I am cutting my stay in NZ short. The way I have the next few weeks planned I will have seen everything I wanted to see and still have two weeks to spare. Since I don't want to waste these two weeks, I changed a few flights. I will fly earlier than planned to Fiji and will also leave Fiji earlier (seriously I don't think I need more than 2 weeks to see Fiji). I will spend more time in Hawai'i though. Initially I had 2 weeks planned and now it's nearly 4 weeks . Two of those weeks I will meet up with Francis ( a good friend from Switzerland). I am really looking forward to meet him there!

I can't believe that I am just a wee bit more than 4 months away from flying back to Switzerland. Feels like it's just around the corner :(.

stay healthy, safe and enjoy life!