Tongoriro & Rotorua

This past weekend we took a little trip to the Tongariro and Rotorua area. We had so much fun & it was by far my favorite thing we’ve done so far. The first day we drove up to Tongoriro National Park to do a little hiking. Lane and I both said if we didn’t have kids with us, we would do all these longer hikes (6+ hours) and stay up there for a couple of days. BUT that is not the case, so we just did a few short ones.

We started with Meads Wall. If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, you might recognize this. I tried to find a picture of that location from the movie, but this was all I could come up with.

It’s a really rocky area and at one point in the movie, there’s a shot of them (taken from a helicopter) walking across the ridge. Of course they use “movie magic” to make it look bigger than it really is. Anyway, here it is in real life. 

Next we hiked to Tawhai Falls. The falls tumble of the edge of an ancient lava flow. This was my favorite. You could walk down to the banks and the kids had a blast throwing rocks in the water. The water is crystal clear and gorgeous!

Last we went to Mounds Walk. I wasn’t too impressed with this one. Debris avalanches during Ruapehu's volcanic activity are believed to have formed these mounds thousands of years ago. It really just looks like a bunch of ugly grassy mounds.

Here are a few pictures of our view while hiking around.

Mount Ruapehu is one of the world's most active volcanoes and the largest active volcano in New Zealand. It is the highest point in the North Island. The deep, active crater is between the peaks and fills with a crater lake between major eruptions.

Mount Ngauruhoe aka Mount Doom (Lord of the Rings) is an active stratovolcano or composite cone in New Zealand, made from layers of lava and tephra. 

After that, we headed to our motel for the night. It’s really hard to find nice lodging in NZ. This town only had 3 places to choose from. We ended up at the Tower Road Motel. They have 7 units.

The next morning we headed to Matamata to take a tour of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movie set. Now I’m not a fan of LOTR. I actually fell asleep in the 1^st movie & haven’t seen one since. But I have seen The Hobbit and liked it. The location is absolutely beautiful with all of its green rolling hills. We took so many pictures here, so I’ll just show a few.

The last part of our little excursion was to a place in Rotorua called Skyline. It has a bunch of luges. They were so much fun. 

The kids were really tuckered out from all the fun.