Wellington

Pictures:

Steam rising from the giant hot pools on the Tongariro Crossing.

View from one of the huts along the Tongariro Northern Circuit (I plan on the spending the night here later) Me on top of the Crossing, obscured by hovering clouds. The coat worked great for the wind though!

"Mount Doom" from Lord of the Rings - also part of Tongariro National Park

The Tongariro crossing yesterday was amazing, even with clouds obscuring the top half of the walk. The views everywhere are incredible. Fortunately, I'm planning on coming back to the park and doing a multi-day trip that includes the crossing, so hopefully the weather will be better the second time around. It really feels like another world at the top, and the dense fog made it even more eerie. It would be nice to be able to see down the mountain too though. It was a very good workout too at 20km, but the popular trails around here are so well maintained that it's fairly easy on your feet. Although it's on Maori land and not accessible, there are huge hotsprings that you can see from the walk and the amount of steam billowing out of them is amazing. Warm, grayish water also flows down along the trails from them. Hopefully I'll get some better pictures the second time around.

After waiting a while for everyone to finish, we headed south and stayed at a backpacker's. It was late, so I don't recall the name of the place or the town. Nothing special so I have no intention of returning. I'm now in Wellington, the capital, and will return to the bus tour at 1:00 and head north to Mount Taranaki (which looks amazing from the pictures). Not so sure where we'll be staying, but I may have a chance to write tonight. Wellington is the "windy city" of New Zealand, and it is certainly blowing. It's nice to have cheap internet though!

Since there was a request to talk about the culture here, I'll try. Really I haven't met too many New Zealanders because I've been surrounded by other travellers for the duration of my stay. From what I've seen, this place really is a lot like the US. And based on my talks with people from the UK, the UK is really a lot like the US too. I suspect that it's got something to do with language (language facilitates culture sharing and is perhaps the most important facet of a culture). There are, of course, small differences, and, on the whole, I find the people more friendly here. I haven't met many Maori so far, and the one person I met for an extended period of time was a janitor, so maybe he isn't the best representation of the culture. There's a big attempt at biculturalism here, but you can still sense some tension between races. Though it's certainly nothing like in Australia. The Australian man on the trip was noticeably perturbed when the Maori man was around last night (and especially when he insulted Australian beer -- it just so happens that this Aussie used to be general manager of Foster's).

-Brian