At Wellington harbor we were picked up by a friend from Bulgaria that has been leaving in New Zealand for the last 10 years and he not only accommodated us but took us everywhere during the next couple of days. Straight from the ferry we went to a hill with a panoramic view over the whole city and i realized that Wellington looked a lot like Veliko Tarnovo - it was scattered over the hills and you constantly go up and down.
It was almost Christmas eve so we had to feel Christmas spirit and as typical kiwis we went to see 'the best decorated house'. Every December in Wellington they have a tradition to make a top 10 list of best decorated houses. These houses are actually decorated for fun from the people that live there and we went to check out number one. It was quite odd for me to watch dwarfs and snow whites when i was dressed in shorts but blooming flowers covered in Christmas lights left me speechless. I was definitely missing the snow and the pine trees
blooming flowers with lights..
Next few days passed in 'city tourism' and a walk in the footsteps of ' Lord of the Rings' as the studio where Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Planet of the Apes and a lot more very popular movies were filmed is located in Wellington. We did not go inside the 'Weta' studio itself as the tour was related to a cartoon we did not watch but we took pictures with Golum, the trolls and George drove us to the airport to see Smog and Gandalf. I was happy as a child as i am a huge fantasy fan :)
The rest of the city was also really nice, as even though it is a capital, the population is only 400 00 and there is no such traffic and madness as in Sofia. The only negative side of Wellington is the weather - it is windy almost all the time especially in the neighborhoods by the water, where the best views are. Even though we managed to find a spot with less wind and we had picnic lunch by the beach which was awesome. But with nice company the time goes by so quickly that before we knew it, we were already on our way to Tongariro National Park
The scenes in Mordor in the Lord of the Rings were filmed in Tongariro National Park. Also the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is considered to be the 'best one day hike' in New Zealand with 19.4km length and it is very important to keep an eye on the volcanic activity if planning to do it as you are actually hiking an active volcano. There are a few so called 'hazardous zones' that are marking the path of the lava flow and signs that advised if you hear some noise from above, not to enter the zones. There is an option to go to the starting point with a car, but as the end point of the hike is at the other side of the volcano and there is still need of some transport to get back to your car we decided to buy tickets to the bus that would drop us off at the beginning in the morning and at 4pm would wait for us the the end. As the guys in the holiday park told us the usual time to complete the hike is about 7-8 hours we chose the 7.30 AM bus from National Park village.
We maintained quite fast pace during the first 4-5 kilometers of the hike as we were startled from all posts on internet that it is really a difficult walk and the people barely manage to be on time for the bus back to the village. It was quite a pleasant walk mainly on wooden pathways made to protect the moss from the tourists and when we reached the first 'check point' called Soda Springs we discovered that we were actually 30 min ahead of the given time. So far so good but now we had to climb the first crater which was unfortunately covered with clouds and remained hidden all the way up. To be honest the next half an hour was the most difficult part of the whole route as it was quite a steep climb and some 'genius' had made the pathway in stairs which i personally find much more difficult to climb rather than a normal path - this long staircase was just stealing my breath away. Even though every step was definitely worth the effort - the smoke from the volcano was ahead of us, all around us and beneath our feet was lava and when the sun finally came out of the clouds the yellow moss so beautifully contrasted to the black lava that if this wasn't a hazardous zone i could have stayed there for quite a while just admiring the nature
At this point of the route there was an option either to go on or to climb the crater of Mt Doom but as the clouds were so dense that we could barely see a few meters head we decide not to climb as there was no view to justify the additional 3 hours needed. So we continued to the next crated - call Red as the soil is really red. At the rim we decided to sit down and wait for a while for the clouds to scatter (fingers crossed) and there was a huge surprise - the ground was warm. Some time later when the clouds did actually disappear we saw what was the reason behind the warm ground - there was steam coming out of the ground all around us. And the other awesome surprise which we would have missed if we had not decided to relax on the rim for a while - the Emerald lakes. We were so lucky that we did not miss that view and behind the lakes finally we could see the path ahead, leading right through a huge smoking crater. A natural steam bath with nice sulfur smell :)
The other hikers saw us sitting there and laughing and they decided to check what is so funny about sitting on the rim in the clouds
really deep blue -and with a lot of imagination they call it.... Blue lake :)
The red crater view from the central crater
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