My trip to New Zealand

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Heading for Taranaki

Returning from the Whanganui journey to the National Park, I wanted to go climb Mt Taranaki (well, you know me. If there's a mountain, I gotta climb it). Back in the backpackers, I ran into Ben & Amir again. They gave up on doing the Tongariro northern circuit track (because of the weather) so they came with me to Taranaki. We went to North Plymouth, and then we actually climbed Taranaki, which was a great climb.

Climbing the wall in the National Park backpackers. This was really fun, look at me, I'm spiderman.
The rugby field in New Plymouth. If you can find a more exciting picture from that town, tell me! Me Ben & Amir actually went to do some surfing nearby, which wasn't such a huge success, but at least it was fun, being in the sea and all...
Mt Taranaki. It is quite a stunning mountain, because there's no other mountain around. And that's what we wanted to climb...
On the way up to the mountain.
Still climbing up. It was a climb of 1,800 meters, not so easy.
The volcano crater. It was still covered in snow (it was late summer!).
On the top of Taranaki. When they made this into a national park, they declared that the boundaries of the park will be 5Km from the mountain. So it was actually a circular park. All the forest beside the park was cut down for logs - and so the remaining forest is a perfect circle, and it looks really good when you're up there!

Going north

After the Taranaki, I said goodbye to Ben & Amir and intended to go north, to the Coromandel. On the way I met Tamar & Einat, two really great girls from israel, and went back to Wanganui with them, for a couple of days. Gal wanted me to come with him & Bex to a Rugby game in Auckland, and I started heading north, and Met with them in Te Kuiti, and then we went to Auckland to see the game.
Bex & Gal in Te-Kuiti. Te Kuiti is the 'shearing capital of the world' (Apparently they have a world championship tournament in shearing sheep, and people from Te Kuiti won it a few times. Crazy kiwis!)
Gal resting in Raglan...
And Bex just beside him. Raglan is a surfers town, and is of course quite annoying, although the backpackers was good.
Watching the Crusaders lose to the Blues in Eden Park, Auckland. I was quite disappointed in rugby. I saw about 4 games in this trip (both in NZ and Samoa), and I didn't like any of them. Stupid game!


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