One of my really good friends from childhood, Megan, is studying abroad in Western Australia this semester while I’m here in NZ. Luckily enough it worked out that she was able to come over to NZ for about a week and we were able to have our very own Middle Earth Adventures!
Meg’s flight got in at 12:05 am in Auckland – so I took a bus from Palmy to Wellington and then a flight to Auckland the night before so that I could meet her at the airport.
Once we had our freak-out-OMG-we’re-in-NZ-together-reunion we had about 7 hours until our bus left to begin the adventure – so we managed to find some food and a place to get some Z’s in the airport.
Our first stop of the trip: Tongariro National Park to do some tramping (aka hiking).
The town area is extremely small, like really really small. There is one store and one school that has two teachers and about thirty students. There isn’t really much to do there except go tramping.
We came during the early winter months and were unsure as to what we could actually do but to our surprise we were able to complete the Tongariro Alpine Crossing,
which is 19.4 km of hiking along volcanic terrain. The crossing provided a bit of a challenge as the higher we went up, the worse the weather got. Clouds covered most of the trek and we could barely see ten meters in front of our faces. 
Along with the clouds we were bombarded with a rain/snow/wind storm which was pretty freaky at the top of the mountain because literally if we just took a few wrong steps we could have fallen into a snow covered volcanic crater and possibly never seen again…yeah, no big deal right?. Living on the edge was quite invigorating!! Check out some of the pics below!
During the summer season, the weather conditions would have not been bad at all to do the crossing. We also would have actually been able to see and enjoy the emerald and crystal blue lakes. But all well – it was still epic!
Although it was cloudy we were able to make out a little the lakes, just not the stunning color of them. If we had more time and better weather conditions, we also would have taken advantage of the opportunity to add on a trip to tramp up Mount Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom for you LOTR fans).
It feels amazing to have conquered one of the best day walks in New Zealand!
The day after the crossing we made our way to Napier but first had a stopover in Taupo. 
In Taupo we were able to grab some lunch and enjoy the gorgeous view of Lake Taupo.
Fun fact: Lake Taupo is so big that the country of Singapore could fit inside it!
We didn’t arrive in Napier until late at night so we were unfortunately unable to really do much. The next day, however, we walked around the town a bit and scheduled a wine tour for the late afternoon/evening.
The wine tour was was a great way to see the country side and to experience some of the famous New Zealand wine. 
Our tour consisted of just the two of us and so we were relatively quick and had the ability to visit 5 different wineries; each extremely different, extremely nice, and just breath-taking in how beautiful the area is. Wineries are very popular in the Hawkes Bay Area. I highly recommend taking a wine tour for anyone that visits the area.
That evening we went down to enjoy the peacefulness of the harbor and then found a nice little restaurant for dinner….where of course we grabbed some fish ‘n’ chips!
Early the next morning we boarded a bus and made our way to Rotorua for a quick stopover before heading to Auckland. I’d been to Rotorua before so
luckily I knew where everything was. [Check out my Rotorua Weekend! blog post!]. We had enough time that I was able to show Meg the town, the lake, some of the geothermal areas, and the Government Gardens before we caught our bus to Auckland.
Sadly we only had a few hours in Auckland that night as
Meg had to catch her flight back to Aussie at 7am the next morning. We met up with a few of the Auckland TEAN’ers and then all went out to a local pub for a few drinks and quiz night. We didn’t win, but we got the second highest score!
After the pub we went back to my friends apartment and passed out for a few hours before getting up and heading to the airport.
Running on barely any sleep we made our way through the dead city – dead only because it was like 4 am and only the street cleaners were out – to catch the bus to the airport. Arriving at the airport we managed to reflect on how crazy awesome of a week we just had and said our goodbyes. We each only have a little over a month left in our respected countries and then we’ll see each other stateside!
Ending the trip, I headed back down to Palmy for the next two days of classes and then I’m off on my next adventure to the Top of the South Island!
Cheers! – Brad 
Emerson Was Right 
