lots of beautiful new zealand

Location: Mount Ruapehu‎

Location: Lake Taupo

Baskets Left: 2

well today the museum quest pushes on. today i covered the middle of the north island. though most of it is fairly generic farmland there were two big highlights that i really should mention.

sadly neither neither were on my list of destination, that alone have any effect on my cargo...


the first was might mount ruapehu‎. a still very active volcano in new zealand.

it is world famous (whether you knew it or not people of the innerweb) due to its role as mount doom in lord of the rings.

it was among the most beautiful things i'd seen on the north island thus far, and hopefully you can click on the picture to make it bigger because it's all my pictures of the place put together by the nice guys at prehistoric insanity (though i can never tell if and when blogger will let you enlarge pics on my posts grrrrrrrrr).


ruapehu‎ had a pretty nice little interpretive centre that i popped in to check out. though remember the key word there was LITTLE...


it had some really cool maori carvings on the front entrance.

very useful top-OH-graphic models of the area...

which as always made me feel like a giant.

finished off by a cute kiwi with jumbo egg...

next i pushed on up further north to within shooting range of my next destination when i passed new zealand's largest lake...

lake taupo. the lake is actually a volcano's crater that has filled with water. it could theoretically erupt at any time... sadly, and yet fortunately it didn't while i was there.

my next stop (and post) the tourism captial of new zealand... known throughout new zealand as rota-vegas...