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.

The Rest of the South Island and Beyond...

Lake Tekapo is a beautiful lake to the east of where we stayed in Mt. Cook National Park. On a super clear day you can see Mt. Cook from here.

This is The Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo.

It's beautiful inside.

Fairlie, New Zealand. For those of you who know Farley (the doggie) back home:)

Have you been to Broomfield, New Zealand? 2km down the road.

Black Betty has! This is the gate to the school. Besides a few houses, this is the whole town.

The Bueller River on State Hwy 6 on the way to Nelson Lakes National Park.

A swan coming out of Lake Rotoroa to see what we are having for breakfast, in Nelson Lakes National Park.

From Nelson Lakes National Park we made our way back to Picton. We took a very early ferry from Picton across the Cook Strait. Black Betty is patiently waiting in line to board the ferry. Lucky John got to drive Betty onto the ferry at 6am, backwards!

Picton from the ferry.

Wellington is New Zealand's capital city. We got to go on a free tour of the Parliament House. This is "the bee hive" where all the politicians offices are located.

Then we took the Wellington Cable Car up the steep hill into the nearby suburbs. The first cable car opened here February 22, 1902 to create easy access into the city. In 1979 they updated the cable car for safety.

Great view of the city from the top.

This is the old cable car on display in the Cable Car Museum.

We had a nice walk through the beautiful Botanical Gardens back to the city streets.

Another pretty flower in the Botanical Gardens.

Wellington from across the harbor.

Dunedin and Mt. Cook National Park

After our restful week in Queenstown we headed east to Dunedin. This is the train station, the second most photographed building in the southern hemisphere. Besides looking at the unique Scottish architecture there are two very important things to do here.

The first one is The Cadbury Tour. Unfortunately because of the summer holidays the factory wasn't producing chocolate. But we did get to see one ton of chocolate drop just because and taste freshly warmed chocolate. Yum!

The second one is to tour the Speight's Brewery. This brewery was founded in 1876 and is the south's top brewery. It's the drinking choice for every "Southern Man". This is John's new "southern man" coozie. Now all he needs is a Speight's Gold Medal Ale to go with it!

It just so happened that we visited this brewery on a very special day. John's 27 birthday! Happy Birthday John! Our new UK friend Mark helped us celebrate.

On our way up the coast we found a Yellow Eyed Penguin colony. Their chicks are about 8 weeks old, so the adults spend all day at sea fishing. In the evening they come to shore to feed their chicks. We watched them come into shore from fishing out at sea all day. This is two of them greeting each other.

Here are four of them discussing their eventful days out at sea.

The Moeraki Boulders are giant spherical rocks formed by a gradual buildup of minerals around a central core.

Does John look like he is being hatched out of the boulder? :)

Later that evening we got to see a Blue Penguin colony. These penguins come to feed their young about an hour after the sun has set. Just when it is too dark to get a good photo. They get blinded by the camera flash. So pretend this is a Blue Penguin crossing the road.

We then ventured inland to the other side of the great Southern Alps. We camped a very chilly night nearby the base of Mt. Cook and Mt. Sefton in Mt. Cook National Park. We awoke to a beautiful day with fresh snow on the peaks!

The tall pointy one with the fresh snow is Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand at 3754 meters.

Black Betty is enjoying the view.

We did an amazing hike up the Mueller Hut track. Yes, that tiny path curving around the side of the mountain is the "trail".

Looking down the Hooker Valley from Sealy Point.

Looking up the Hooker Valley at Sealy Point. The lake in the background is coming from the Hooker Glacier. That dirty patch of what looks like snow just beyond the lake is the Hooker Glacier.

Us at Sealy Point. The lake in the foreground is coming from the Mueller Glacier. The dirty patch of what looks like snow to the left of us is the Mueller Glacier.

A storm rolled in just as we made it to the ridge. Of course it started snowing!

We made it!

We made a snowman on the way down. It would have been bigger, but it started snowing harder. So our responsible selves decided it was better to get off the ridge rather than play in the snow.

The storm cleared later that evening and we got to see Mt. Sefton with the fresh snow. Beautiful!