Roadtrip/Semester begins

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while but I've been pretty busy these past few weeks. I am now in my second week of uni, classes started on March 3rd. This semester I'm taking Electrical Machines, Digital Electronics, Software Engineering, and Intro to NZ Society in Culture. The last one is a nice easy-going class, I'm looking forward to it. I've got classes Mon-Thurs, so I can travel on the weekends. But anyways, enough about boring class.

The week before classes started I joined in on a road-trip around the north island with Kyle and Jen, both from CA, Carolyn from the east coast of the US, and Heidi from Denmark. After renting a decent sized station wagon, the "Welly", we traveled south of Auckland, here is the route we took in blue.



Our first stop was Waitomo, home of the glowworm caves. Wanting something more interactive than just a boat ride through the caves, we signed up for a black-water rafting trip. The name was a little misleading, there was no rafting about the trip, but it was a lot of fun. We suited up in wetsuits and each received a large innertube to float on when the water got too deep. The water was cold, and the caves were pitch black but we had lights on our helmets. The glowworms were really beautiful suspended from the ceiling, we turned our lights out while we went under them. The tour ended with instructions to switch our headlamps off and find our way in the darkness to the exit, it was a great finish to the experience.



We then left the Waitomo region and headed for Rotorua to find a hostel for the night. We ended up at Hot Rock Hostel, not the best place in the world but it had a bar connected to it and free drink vouchers. Kyle didn't have the best of luck, he was plagued by loud drunk Englishmen and a couple having sex in the lower bed of his bunk.

The next day we headed south of Rotorua to the Waimangu Thermal Reserve. Much of the central north island sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so there is a lot of geothermal activity around places like Rotorua and Taupo. The reserve was really interesting with steaming rivers and bright colored ponds. We walked for about five hours along the walking and tramping paths there before we were picked up and returned to the entrance by bus in the afternoon. Rotorua has a Zorbing hill north of town so we drove up to check that out. It was too expensive for me, but I watched the other guys do it and they loved it, Kyle took a great video him inside during the roll. Here are some pictures, and a few videos, of Waimangu.



After Zorbing we traveled south from Rotorua and around the edge of Lake Taupo to Tongariro National Park. We stopped for a bit and took some pictures of the lake, it was enormous, the largest lake in the country. We ended up staying at a hostel inside the park, it was much nicer than the one in Rotorua and had a great restaurant just up the road.

We started Friday bright and early, catching a bus and arriving at the starting point of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing at 8am. The crossing is the most popular day walk in New Zealand, no doubt because it winds around "Mount Doom", or Mount Ngauruhoe, its real name. The tramp wasn't easy, the hardest I've been on so far, but it was worth it for the diverse landscapes and amazing views. After walking through grassy lowlands for a while, we came out on a lava plain before ascending the Devil's Staircase, a tough climb up about 2500 feet into the mountains. We ended up in the clouds for a good part of the walk, that was something I'd never experienced before, it was neat. We then started making our way down past the Emerald lakes, bright blue-green bodies of water filled with minerals from the eruptions. After descending down into the grassy hills again we ended up in a sub-tropical forest for the last hour of the tramp. It was a really great experience, and makes me even more eager to get out and see what kinds of tramping NZ can offer. Here are some pictures of the walk.



We stayed in the same hostel again that night, and the next day drove back up to Taupo to relax in the natural hot springs there. The girls got massages and facial treatments, it was a nice last day, we were all a little wore out from the tramp the day before. We left Taupo that afternoon and arrived back in Auckland that night.

Since then I've just been trying to get used to how things work in the city and around campus. I've been to the Wellesley Student Apartments a lot to have dinners with friends and also to the pubs around town. I did go to the Noho Marae this past weekend. It was basically a Maori welcome to international students at AUT. I learned a lot and it was nice to be welcomed into their whanau, their family. We learned songs, dances, and games and then performed them in front of a crowd on Saturday night before eating food from a hangi, an underground stone oven of sorts. They had pork, lamb, beef, potatoes, pumpkin... it was delicious.

I sent some gifts to some special ladies yesterday, I'm going to try to get something out to everyone here soon, it's just hard to find the time some days. I'll try to blog again before a few weeks pass. Take care everyone, I've been thinking about you.