Hello Tūrangi, New Zealand

by   •   Hiking, Travel
 

After spending a long afternoon at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, we continued our New Zealand trip by heading east to Tūrangi, a small town on the North Island Volcanic Plateau situated on the west bank of the Tongariro River.

If you didn’t catch it from previous blog posts, I’ve been traveling together with my friend Doug Wreden and doing all our tourism activities together. However, this was the first day where we explored separately—Doug did a strenuous hike across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, while I opted to do a lighter trail in town because my stamina is not as good as his and I was exhausted from the previous three days of physical activity.

After preparing some bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, Greek yogurt, and orange juice for breakfast in our lodge, I headed out to the Tongariro River Trail, one of the entrances of which was right outside our door.

The northern side of the trail had an incline and some switchbacks that went up a few hundred feet in elevation, allowing hikers to get a nice view of the town and its surrounding areas.

After taking in the scenery, I descended the hill and made my way down and under the bridge and overpass of New Zealand State Highway 1 going over the Tongariro River.

While continuing on the path, I saw a man fishing in the river.

On the way back, I took a more residential route so that I could also see the town.

It wasn’t very busy, so the residential areas made for a very calming and peaceful walk with a nice mountain view as a backdrop.

I made my way back to our lodge—The Cottage at River Birches.

Most of the inns, lodges, and motels in Tūrangi looked fairly dated and in need of renovations, and a lot of the better spots were farther out in the outskirts, so we had somewhat limited options for nice accommodations.

During my search, I came across River Birches and saw that it looked very well-maintained and had a good balance of modern touches while still sustaining a cozy cabin mood. They had an option to book out an entire three-bedroom cottage to ourselves; it was obviously much pricier than any of our other options, but because both Doug and I are financially comfortable, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to splurge for two nights to enhance our vacation.

The owners of the cottage made sure that we had any and all of our wishes fulfilled. There was incredible attention to detail in every aspect of the hospitality experience, and they provided a wealth of conveniences that made our stay feel seamless and pampered.

Our next overnight stop will be in Rotorua before looping back up north to Auckland.

 

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Hello, Ruakuri Cave in Waitomo, New Zealand

by   •   Tourism
 

After spending a few days in Auckland, we continued our New Zealand trip by driving south to Waitomo to explore their cave system. We booked two tours—one of the Waitomo Glowworm Cave and one of the Ruakuri Cave.

Photographs were not permitted inside the Waitomo Glowworm Cave, but I was able to snap this shot from outside after the boat tour was over.

In between the tours, we took a quick break and I had some lunch at their café.

The Ruakuri Cave was in a different area from the Waitomo Glowworm Cave, so we took our rental car over and met up with the tour guide at the Ruakuri entrance.

We descended into the cave through a long, winding ramp.

Our tour guide took us through the cave, explaining the history of the rock formations and teaching us about the biology of glowworms.

You may be wondering where the glowworms were. If you’re not familiar, glowworms are bioluminescent insect larvae. The marketing materials for the Wiatomo Glowworm Caves made them seem extremely bright and vibrant… but this is basically the best that we saw:

Keep in mind that this photo is from my camera’s raw sensor data with everything enhanced right up to the point where leveling it any higher would cause static to appear in the image. They were barely visible, and to make things worse, I have astigmatism so I could hardly see the lights and couldn’t really get my eyes to focus in on them.

In case it wasn’t obvious from the photograph, no, those are not real climbers—they set up those mannequins to demonstrate what people had to do a long time ago to enter and map out the cave.

The glowworms were disappointingly underwhelming. To give them the benefit of the doubt, there are certain seasons during which the glowworms are brighter and more visible, but based on what I saw, the photos that they show on their website seem outright deceptive.

With that being said, the cave system was interesting and I enjoyed seeing all the rock formations. I have been to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota in the United States of America before, and it was nice seeing the difference in rock structures between the two.

 

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Hello, coast-to-coast walk in Auckland, New Zealand

by   •   Hiking
 

In order to see as much of Auckland as possible while in the city, we decided to do the coast-to-coast walk starting at the Viaduct Harbour and ending at the Onehunga Foreshore. The idea of this walk is to be able to say that you “walked across New Zealand,” as you’re technically going from the northern shore of the country to the southern shore.

It would’ve gone a lot faster if we just took a straight route to the end, but we wanted to see as many notable landmarks on the way as possible, so we took a bit of a zig-zag pattern and spent 4 hours and 40 minutes completing the walk. The total distance was about 10.8 miles (17.4 kilometers) and had an elevation gain of about 1,476 feet (450 meters).

As part of the hike, we cut through Mount Eden and One Tree Hill, both of which I covered in their own blog posts—“Hello, Maungawhau in Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand” and “Hello, Cornwall Park and Maungakiekie in Auckland, New Zealand”—published in the past two days.

For photos from everything else that didn’t fall under those two general areas, I picked out some highlights from the adventure below:

 

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Hello, Cornwall Park and Maungakiekie in Auckland, New Zealand

by   •   Hiking
 

The day after our arrival and during our first full day in Auckland, New Zealand, we decided to tackle the Auckland coast-to-coast walk. This route took us through some points of interest, one of which was Cornwall Park and Maungakiekie, also referred to as One Tree Hill, on the eastern side of the Epsom neighborhood.

I’ll be sharing photographs highlighting some of the most interesting sights from the coast-to-coast walk soon, but because I had a lot of photos concentrated in Cornwall Park and the closely-surrounding area, I decided to split them out into their own post in the meantime.

Here are some pictures I took near the entrance, in the park, during our ascent to the summit, and of the view from the top:

 

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Hello, Maungawhau in Mount Eden, Auckland, New Zealand

by   •   Hiking
 

The day after our arrival and during our first full day in Auckland, New Zealand, we decided to tackle the Auckland coast-to-coast walk. This route took us through some points of interest, one of which was Maungawhau in the Mount Eden neighborhood.

I’ll be sharing photographs highlighting some of the most interesting sights from the coast-to-coast walk soon, but because I had a lot of photos concentrated from Maungawhau and the closely-surrounding area, I decided to split them out into their own post in the meantime.

Here are some pictures I took during our ascent to the summit and of the panoramic view from the top:

 

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Hello, SEA LIFE Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand

by   •   Tourism
 

At the end of last month, my friend Doug Wreden held his annual charity event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation, during which one of the stretch goals—at half a million dollars—was for him and me to go to New Zealand to buy cologne and visit the aquarium as an inside joke. We met that threshold, so as promised, Doug and I went to SEA LIFE Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand.

I’ve been to a handful of aquariums before—the Aquarium of the Pacific, South Carolina Aquarium, and Seattle Aquarium just to name a few—and comparatively, SEA LIFE was a little bit underwhelming. With that being said, Auckland isn’t exactly one of the biggest cities ever with a ton of resources, so contextually speaking, SEA LIFE wasn’t actually that bad.

The aquarium started with a section that was basically a history museum, which was a little bit strange. However, once we got past that part, it started resembling what you’d expect from a typical aquarium.

My favorite part of the aquarium was the immersive tunnel. I’ve seen other aquariums that have the 180° glass tubes that allow you to see fish, sharks, and other sea life above you, but the one that SEA LIFE had was far more advanced. The tunnel was much longer than expected and laid out in a circular pattern. It had an automatically-moving conveyor belt so you could stand in one spot and take in the view around you without needing to walk.

I took a lot of photos throughout the aquarium; below are the ones that turned out the best:

 

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