dragonsblog

This is my last panorama from New Zealand that was not taken while on our safari. All three posted here are from our third day in New Zealand, December 17, 2004.(Click on the image to view a larger version. Use your browser's back button to return here.)

Although the focus of our trip was the south end of South Island where the most dramatic scenery is, we had decided to add a couple days to the trip just to get a taste of North Island. It didn't give us time to do much, but we were able to enjoy visiting the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua (more on that later) and take a brief hike in Tangariro National Park.

Tangariro is in the central highlands of North Island and is home to the imposing cones of three active volcanoes. This is the area of the country in which the scenes were filmed for Mordor in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, home of the evil Sauron. We wanted to take at least a brief hike through "Mordor" even though the weather was rainy and overcast and we couldn't really see much of the three volcanoes.

So we drove about 7 kilometers up a gravel road to the Tangariro Crossing Trail and hiked up the trail through the mists towards the Tangariro caldera. This was the wet side of the mountains so definitely not a barren volcanic landscape, but instead filled with a wide palette of colors of plants, lichens and mosses. At points there were little spatter cones, active vents coming through the ground, and beautiful little waterfalls in the stream along the trail. The trail was well groomed, though not always so flat and wide as shows in the panorama. Despite the marginal weather, we really enjoyed the hike.