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I've kind of fallen off the wagon the past few days on posting blogs & photos from our New Zealand trip in April. After posting an overview of the packed day-trip visit to the park in close to real-time, since returning home I've been going back through my photos to post more details— and photos. I was setting a swift pace with that last week up through Friday with 3-4 journals a day, then.... Honestly, what happened is then I got to a part of the trip that's hard to blog about. I started telling myself, "Enh, maybe tomorrow I'll have energy for it." That tomorrow never came. And today's still not the day. So instead I'm going to skip ahead to another part of the trip.
In New Zealand we split our time between North Island and South Island, a week on each. North Island we flew to on Monday, landing in Wellington with the giant eagles, drove up to Ohakune with a brief visit to a waterfall just outside Wellington, and stayed the night at the ill-named Hobbit Motor Lodge. This set us up for a full day at Tongariro National Park.
Tongariro NP is home to volcanic Mount Ruapehu, the highest peak on North Island at 2,797 m (9,177 ft), and several waterfalls. We didn't care too much about the peak itself. We were there for the waterfalls. And we had a full day planned with four waterfall hikes!
As you can see in the photo above, the day did not start off very promising. We drove through town outside the park with heavy clouds hanging low overhead. As we drove up the flanks of the volcano into the park the clouds turned to mist and then rain. Basically we were in the clouds. By the time we got to the trailhead for our first planned hike, Waitonga Falls, we were having serious second thoughts. Hiking a trek of 4 miles in the rain did not seem like fun.
We decided to see if we could wait out the weather. Perhaps if we did something else for an hour the skies would clear up and we could go do that hike. So we drove further up the park road toward our second planned hike.
We didn't get as far as the second planned trail when we spotted this falls off the side of the road, in the distance. We pulled over to the side of the road and enjoyed the view from next to the car. The falls was actually was a good distance away. The photo above I made with a moderate telephoto lens.
"Could this be Waitonga Falls?" we asked ourselves. "If so we've saved ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain!"
We checked our trail map, and alas, no, this was not Waitonga Falls. We didn't save ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain. But we did get an unexpected bonus falls that is not Waitonga Falls.
Here's a photo I made with a longer telephoto lens. If there were a trail to these falls, about 1/4 mile up the canyon, we probably would have hiked it. Hiking a short distance like that in the drizzling rain isn't too bad.
One thing you can see in these latter two photos is that cloudy, damp days are actually good conditions for photos of waterfalls. The light is even and the foliage seems to pop and glisten with the moisture. Cloudy, damp days just are not good conditions for enjoying lengthy hikes to get to the falls. 😅
In New Zealand we split our time between North Island and South Island, a week on each. North Island we flew to on Monday, landing in Wellington with the giant eagles, drove up to Ohakune with a brief visit to a waterfall just outside Wellington, and stayed the night at the ill-named Hobbit Motor Lodge. This set us up for a full day at Tongariro National Park.
Tongariro NP is home to volcanic Mount Ruapehu, the highest peak on North Island at 2,797 m (9,177 ft), and several waterfalls. We didn't care too much about the peak itself. We were there for the waterfalls. And we had a full day planned with four waterfall hikes!
As you can see in the photo above, the day did not start off very promising. We drove through town outside the park with heavy clouds hanging low overhead. As we drove up the flanks of the volcano into the park the clouds turned to mist and then rain. Basically we were in the clouds. By the time we got to the trailhead for our first planned hike, Waitonga Falls, we were having serious second thoughts. Hiking a trek of 4 miles in the rain did not seem like fun.
We decided to see if we could wait out the weather. Perhaps if we did something else for an hour the skies would clear up and we could go do that hike. So we drove further up the park road toward our second planned hike.
We didn't get as far as the second planned trail when we spotted this falls off the side of the road, in the distance. We pulled over to the side of the road and enjoyed the view from next to the car. The falls was actually was a good distance away. The photo above I made with a moderate telephoto lens.
"Could this be Waitonga Falls?" we asked ourselves. "If so we've saved ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain!"
We checked our trail map, and alas, no, this was not Waitonga Falls. We didn't save ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain. But we did get an unexpected bonus falls that is not Waitonga Falls.
Here's a photo I made with a longer telephoto lens. If there were a trail to these falls, about 1/4 mile up the canyon, we probably would have hiked it. Hiking a short distance like that in the drizzling rain isn't too bad.
One thing you can see in these latter two photos is that cloudy, damp days are actually good conditions for photos of waterfalls. The light is even and the foliage seems to pop and glisten with the moisture. Cloudy, damp days just are not good conditions for enjoying lengthy hikes to get to the falls. 😅
