I started out thinking I could head out onto the trails in New Zealand by myself, but after realizing that I wasn't familiar with the country and would be by myself, I looked around the web and found Hiking New Zealand, a small company that runs small backpacking trips on both the North and South Islands. All of the trips looked great, but I decided on the 10 day 'Secret South' that started in Queenstown and ended up in Christchurch. It covered the lower two thirds of the South Island, stopping at some popular places (Milford Sound, Mt. Cook), as well as more remote locations (the Caitlins, Lake Ohau, Green Lake). The group was just eight people and a guide, and a nice mix of car camping and overnight backpacking trips.

Pictures from the Hiking New Zealand portion of the trip

After ending the hiking trip in Christchurch, I spent a day wandering around the city, then took the bus to Picton, the South Island port for the ferry across the Cook Strait. The ferry trip was the roughest boat ride I've ever been on (which isn't saying much)- but the boat was so big it had an entire deck for just railroad cars, and another for trucks, and it was still going up and down like a roller coaster. I sat up on the top (8th) deck for a while, and as the bow went down the crash of the waves would send spray up over the top of the boat. The ferry arrived in Wellington, and I spent that evening and the next day in the city, mostly at the Te Papa Museum, New Zealand's new national museum. I had great exhibits on Maori culture and New Zealand history, as well as an extensive Lord of the Rings exhibit.

I rented a car in Wellington, and drove north along the west coast to Wanganui where I spent the night. The next day I was up early and drove on to National Park, a small town next to Tongariro National Park, and made it just in time to catch the last shuttle bus to the start of the Tongariro Crossing, billed as the best one day hike in New Zealand. That might be debatable, but it certainly is the most popular one day hike. It was completely overcast, but there were still close to 700 people on the trail. I passed at least 600 of them during the day (I lost count around 100). Perhaps on a clear day I wouldn't have noticed as much, but everywhere you turned there were hikers. Here's a crappy picture I borrowed from the web of what it looks like on a clear day.

From National Park I drove north to Waitomo, famous for the numerous caves in the hills around town. I had signed up for a 7 hour cave trip in the Lost World cave. The name came from the (English) discoverers who commented looking down the entrance hole was like "looking into a lost world". After donning a wetsuit and rubber boots (yes, they both fit), we rappelled (or in New Zealand, abseiled) down 330 feet to the cave floor through a giant sinkhole. Going down the rope you completely loose your sense of how deep the hole is, and its not until you're on the ground and you see someone else rappelling down that you can grasp the real scale of the cave. After a quick lunch we (7 people and two guides) headed upstream through waterfalls, deep pools, small cracks and giant rooms filled with glowworms. Glowworms are essentially maggots that are bioluminescent in order to attract food. They thrive in dark, humid places, i.e. caves, and area popular New Zealand tourist attractions. Fortunately, the Lost World cave is not the prime glowworm tourist cave, so it was just the nine of us peering up at thousands of violet lights. Getting out of the cave was as simple as walking out a tunnel- the stream begins as a surface stream and essentially flows into a large limestone cliff. Unfortunately I couldn't bring my camera, and I haven't been able to find any good pictures of the entrance on the web. The best I can do is this picture taken by one of the guides.

The next day I drove to Rotorua, or Roto-vegas as its been called. It's the tourist capital of New Zealand, known for its hot springs and thermals rather than casinos. There isn't much to the city besides tourist shops, places with natural hot pools and some Maori tourist/cultural attractions. One exception was the Agrodome, basically a working farm for tourists, but recommended to me by several locals. They are best known for their 'sheep show', which shows of some 32 breeds of sheep. They also shear a sheep up on stage, get audience members to milk a cow, and demonstrate how sheep dogs are used. The grand finale was three sheep dogs running around on the backs of the 32 assembled sheep- and then stopping, still on the sheep's backs, on command. To finish off the day I drove south out of Rotorua to Waiotapu, one of the better thermal parks in the area, to look at mud pools, hot springs, geysers and other volcanic formations.

By this time I had to start heading back to Auckland, but I made one last stop at Tarawera Falls, a unique waterfall that shoots out the middle of a cliff rather than flowing over the top. A lava flow blocked off the exit of Lake Tarawera at some point, but the lava had lots of cracks, so the Tarawera River flows out of the lake, and then gradually disappears underground, only to reappear several hundred meters downstream from the side of a cliff. From the falls I drove out to the east coast, then north, cutting across the base of the Cormandel peninsula, and then up to Auckland.

I spent my last day in New Zealand walking around Auckland- a quick loop around downtown with a side trip up the Sky Tower in the morning, then several hours in the Auckland Museum, and finally stops at two of the volcanic cones overlooking the city, Mt. Eden and One Tree Hill (which unfortunately now has only an ugly stone obelisk- no tree). From there it was a quick drive to the airport, and an overnight flight back to LA and ultimately Oakland.

Pictures from Christchurch to Auckland