Following our stint at Waiinu we headed inland (this was very hard to do) to check out Tongariro National Park. Tongariro was the first national park in New Zealand, boasts one of the best day hikes in the country, and is home to a number of active volcanoes, including Mount Doom! Of course, it’s not called Mount Doom, but it’s the volcano that was used for Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies. At last, we would have a chance to climb the mountain and cast the ring into the fiery…what would a blog about New Zealand be without at least one reference to Lord Of The Rings? Or sheep. So, in honor of stereotypical New Zealand here’s a sheep.
I’d love to include a picture of Mount Doom, but we never really saw it–we were foiled by a raging storm. We got to Tongariro just in time to set up our newly acquired tarp (Ethan, you’ll be happy to know that we spent the two extra bucks to avoid the dreaded blue tarp). We set up the tarp, pulled out the chairs, and pretty much sat there through the biggest storm of the summer. We did manage to see a pretty neat waterfall, and watching the stream near our campsite turn into a raging river was cool too. We spent a lot of time in the Visitor’s Center waiting out the weather which was not letting up at all. We checked out the exhibits two or three times apiece. We watched every minute of every video display inside that place. If you ever want to know anything about the history of skiing in Tongariro just send us your questions. Worried that we would soon become a part of the exhibit, we headed out into the rain and drove back to our refuge under the tarp. The Tongariro Crossing hike would just have to wait until another time–the weather forecast wasn’t much better for the next few days.
We were in for a real treat though. The drive from Tongariro towards Levin was full of landmarks including a giant carrot, a giant gum boot, and a memorial to a train wreck (normal size). We spent a few days on the beaches near Levin and then headed to Celtic Organic Winery where we’ve been for the past 5 days.
You might be saying to yourself, “Why do Tim and Joanie seem to only go to farms that produce alcoholic beverages?” Well, I don’t know what to say except, why not? Clearly the benefits are outstanding. Celtic Organic Winery has been fantastic. Malcolm makes some very tasty wines in the old Celtic tradition. They age outside through the seasons instead of in a cool cellar. We’ve had some delicious plum port wine, plum wine, celtic mead, green ginger wine, green ginger sparkling wine, whiskey mac, and feijoa wine. I better go make sure I got them all. Our first day here we were able to put our labeling skills to use, but since then we been focusing our energies on some outside projects. We helped build a fence, weed some gardens, and for the past two days we’ve been cleaning up the 10 pine trees that were just cut down. There’s now a massive pile of limbs out in the field, and it’s a bummer that we won’t be around to see the fire when it’s burned.
One of the best things about being here are the shared dinners that we have with Malcolm and his wife Deb. We just had an incredible meal thanks to Malcom’s trip out in his boat today–fresh snapper. We, I should say I, enjoyed some mussels yesterday. Joanie was brave enough to give them a try, but isn’t the biggest fan. We had fresh fish the first night here as well, and several other delicious meals in between. We’ve got a bit of work to do tomorrow morning, and then we head south to Wellington to meet up with Ron and Jill from White Cliff Organic Brewery to help out with the Wellington beer festival.
