The Midsection of the North Island

We took a beautiful drive through the midsection of the north island to Tongariro National Park. This is New Zealand's oldest National Park established in 1887. There are three volcanoes here and two of them are the most active composite volcanoes in the world. This is Mt. Ruapehu. It last erupted in 2007.

In the winter these crazy kiwi's ski on this volcano! It's called Whakapapa Ski Field. The locals said they have enough snow to ski from about the end of June until the end of September.

We hiked up this rocky volcano. Then took two chairlifts back down.

This is a waterfall on the way up.

Beautiful view of the valley from the top.

Found a sign. Danger!

Cliff!

Watch out!

We ventured further north to the Lake Taupo area. About 5 minutes outside of Taupo is the 11 meter long Huka Falls. These are the largest falls on the Waikato River, one of New Zealand's largest rivers.

The Aratiatia Dam is the first of a series of hydroelectric stations on the Waikato River. Four times a day the dam is opened and 90,000 liters of water is released from the spillway per second. They do this to demonstrate how the river used to flow prior to the dam being built.

Before the water release.

After the water release. It was neat to watch the river valley fill up with water.