Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and is recovering from all the turkey/ham dinners that seem to keep coming at this time of the year. We spent Christmas with our work friend's family that lives just down the road from us. We had a great feast of ham, pork, salads, potatoes, and in kiwi tradition pavlova for desert. My parents had told me earlier in the day that is was -25 degrees at home and the kiwis could hardly believe it. Here it was about 21 degrees and quite humid, not really the Christmas weather I'm used to so it really didn't feel like Christmas at all.

The week before Christmas, we had a couple of adventures during the week. One night right after work, we headed down to Ohakune to mountain bike down the Old Coach Road. It was a 19 km trek through the bush and had some great scenery. It was a road built to connect Ohakune with Horopito back in the day, but had not been used in years.

Roberta under one of the old viaducts not being used anymore.

The coolest part of the trip was the Hapuawhenua viaduct built across the Hapuawhenua valley. Our legs were burning a bit by the time we made it to Ohakune, but the trip was totally worth it.

One other night that week, we went horse back riding with one of our client/friend from the vet clinic. It was a great ride through the hills speckled with sheep. It was nice to get on the back of a horse again. I still need to work on my horsemanship skills, but it's starting to come along. Dave was impressed with Roberta's skills on the back of the horse especially when he had a bit of a freak out.

The weekend before Christmas, we spent at Hanna and Rex's cabin at Lake Taupo. The Friday night we had a supper at little Waihi at a restaurant right on the lake with all of the worker's at the clinic. The presentation of the food was quite classy for this hillbilly, and it tasted great. Saturday morning Rex and I got up and headed out on the lake to catch some trout. We were jigging at depths anywhere from 60-150 feet. My new fishing rod Roberta got me for Christmas proved to be quite lucky as I caught around 10 rainbow trout. Rex caught his fait share as well.

In the afternoon we checked out the trout hatchery and went on a bush walk which was cool.

Roberta came with us that evening to catch some of the action, but we didn't catch a thing. That's fishing for ya.


On Sunday morning we tried to find the fish again. After no luck jigging, we started trolling for them with lead lines that sink down to the bottom. I ended up catching one fish which was work to get the 100 m of line in but it was the only one of the day. We spent the afternoon on the beach and took the sit on top kayaks for a paddle up a nearby stream. Before we knew it, it was the end of another great weekend.

Today we are finishing up our last day of work at the Taumarunui Vet Clinic and are taking 2 months off to tour around the country a bit more. We plan on spending New Year's at Waihi Beach in Corommandel region with some friends we lived with in Palmerston North. From there we are heading north of Auckland to the Bay of Islands and 90 Mile Beach. After taking all that in, we will make our way down to the South Island sometime after the middle of January. We will try our best to keep you updated, but don't know how much we will have internet access. Happy New Year to everyone!!!

Until next time.......

Tongariro Crossing and Bridge to Nowhere

Hey there strangers,

it has been a while. Time flies when you are having fun or just incredibly busy at work in this case. We will try to catch you up with what we have been up to for the last few weekends.

Dec. 14th - 16th

We had ourselves one hell of a good weekend. Friday night was the clinic’s Christmas Party for all of the clients. Roberta and I were the bartenders for the night which was entertaining at times. Also our English friends, Cal and Jimmy, came up from Wellington. 

We got up with the sun on Saturday morning, so we could get an early start on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. 

We had been talking about doing this hike for months now. It is a 19 km hike that goes between Mount Ngaruhoe and Mount Tongariro and is said to be the best one day hike in New Zealand, so we were pretty pumped. We drove to the end of the hike to drop off a vehicle to find the parking lot was baracaded off saying that it was closed due to volcanic activity. We knew that the trail was open though, so we just left our vehicle on the side of the road. Once we got to the start of the track, we found out that the trail was open to a certain point, but then we had to turn around and go back to the start because of the small eruption a few weeks back. Guess we should have looked into that. 

 Cal Reading A Nice Little Confidence Booster - Ha

Mount Doom aka Mount Ngaruhoe before we started our ascent.

We could not have asked for a better day and the views were just spectacular.  The best of all being on top of Mount Ngaruhoe. That part was a side hike and proved to be quite testing. For every two steps we took, one was lost one sliding back on the scree. It made for a quick decent though basically scree skiing down the mountain. 

Doesn't look like much, but it was quite steep and loose.

 At the top of Mount Doom with views in all directions! Sweet As!

 Mount Doom's Crater

 Roberta after sliding down the snow. Quite gracefully I might add. Ha

 Cal and Jimmy with their graceful slides. Ha

Scree Skiing

After climbing Mount Doom, we continued on the trek towards Red Crater and Emerald Lakes. Our legs were a bit like jello after the big climb and we had to take more breaks than we did before. The path was blocked between Emerald Lakes and Blue Lake, so once we got to this point we turned around and went back. 

 Central Crater with Mount Doom in background

 Blue and Emerald Lakes

 Red Crater

A good cool off spot.

It was nearly dinner time when we got back to the car. After picking up our van from the other side, we went home for a few drinks and some tea (aka supper.) Kiwis call supper tea which was confusing the first few times we had heard that. Our beds never felt better than they did that night.

After a big rest, Roberta, Jimmy, Cal, and I headed off to Pipiriki which was about an hours drive south and west from Owhango. It is located right near Whanganui National Park and was our jet boat outlet to the Bridge to Nowhere. 

The jet boat ride was about hour upstream the Whanganui River. We had many stops along the way to educate us about the history of the river and the history of the Maori people on the river. We then got off the boat and hiked 45 mins over to the Bridge to Nowhere.

The government of New Zealand wanted to develop the area for farming after the First World War. The bridge was built across the deep Mangapurua gorge to provide access to the area. The intention was to build roads to it later, but the area was too remote and unsuitable for farming that the venture failed and the farms reverted to native bush. We stopped at the bridge for some lunch and a history lesson and then hiked back to the jet boat. The driver did some 360's in the boat on the way back which resulted in me having ringing ears from Roberta’s screams. Ha. 

About half the way back to Pipiriki, we were dropped off to canoe the rest of the way. Jimmy and Cal had to get back to Wellington, so they continued back on the jet boat but a few other couples were also canoeing back. It was a nice peaceful ride downstream. 

There were a few rapids to navigate through and we made it through them all without having to go for a swim. The one rapid was called the 50/50 rapids(50% of canoes flip and 50% get through) so it was nice to get through that one. We left the other groups in the dust as they had not canoed very much and we were going as slow as we could. We stopped and got out at a cave with a waterfall within it along the river. Supposedly there were big eels in the water in the cave but we did not see any. 

We made it back in about 2 hours and then headed back home. Another busy weekend in the books.