north island

after spending a week touring the north island, we took the ferry down to the south island. it's a bit strange having a car but very nice. we've been staying at holiday parks, equivalent to the commercialized campgrounds in the US, due to the lack of public campgrounds. they've been very nice though, nice kitchens, washer and dryers, hot showers and generally very, very clean.

we first went up to the bay of islands, then down to rotorua to see some of the geothermal stuff then down to taupo, where they had just held an ironman. we spent a day climbing in beautiful whanganui bay. the road down was a bit rough and we scraped up the car a bit, good thing it was a rental and a well-used car. we only got on a couple climbs since we didn't have a guidebook and there were no other climbers there, so it was hard to judge how difficult the routes were.

we opted not to do the famous one-day tongariro crossing (dubbed the best one-day walk in NZ) and instead did a small portion of it and hiked up to the top of mt. ngauruhoe instead (mt. doom in lord of the rings). it's a cool looking volcano but unfortunately it was completely clouded over when we reached the summit so we could barely even see the lake in the crater. the ascent was hard work through loose scree and deep ash but the descent was very quick, scree-skiing most of the way.

went to egmont national park in the west and saw tarakana, the volcano the used as mt. fuji in the last samarai.

which leads us to the ferry. we had some time to kill before catching the ferry and erick decided to play on the trampoline at the campground. he successfully did a few flips but on the last one landed on the edge of the trampoline, hitting both knees on the metal edge and falling to the ground. the result was one badly bruised knee and one knee with two deep gashes (you could see the fatty tissue) but not much blood. fortunately there was a medical clinic close by and they stitched erick up in half an hour for only ~US$21 consultation fee. amazing how much cheaper and efficient the visit was than in the US. so we'll take it easy for a few days until he's able to hike and climb again.