New Zealand Day 2

Sunday, Dec. 15th

Auckland to Tongariro

We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then checked out.

We headed into the city. Our first stop was at the Mt. Eden Crater. This is a small crater in the middle of the city that they have turned into a park. We got a great 360 degree view of Auckland. A pretty big city.

Next we went to the center of down town and took a walk on the main street. We  went to Starbucks and purchased our favorite "City Mugs", both a souvenir for us, and Christmas gifts for a few people.

We visited the Elim City church and met a few nice people. Some were impressed that we had just got there the night before, from another country, on vacation and chose to go to church. That's our style though. We didn't want to have to miss church for the whole month while we were gone.

There was still time to adventure a little before we have to start driving, so we went back over to "City Center" to have lunch and walk around a little more. We went to a little pub that had super good food. We also discovered the "REI" of New Zealand, which is called Kathmandu, as well as one other outdoor store that was called Macpac. We also made a big trip to the grocery store, this is how we planned to eat most of our meals for the trip. After we were done in the city, we got in our car and made our way out of town.

We took HWY 1 down to Hamilton, then took a smaller highway down to the West side of Tongariro Natl. Park. We got there super late, had a hard time finding where our campground was supposed to be at. Found out that we turned onto the wrong road in the park and had to turn around in search of where we were supposed to go. Finally found the road which happened to be a gravel road way further out then we expected. Much to our surprise, the campground was further off in the wilderness from the road and we had to hike a mile to get to it. It was already almost 1am at this time, we were really frustrated, and so we pitched our tent in the dirt off the parking lot.