mytravelbugbite

Our Christmas Day started with us exchanging a few small gifts at our hotel and then we took part in the Taupo Christmas Parkrun. The route runs along the edge of the lake for 2.5km before turning and heading back along the same path. It was well attended and a lot of fun.

The rest of the day was spent driving down to Wellington, however we made a couple of stops along the way. The first of these was at Tawhai Falls, which is Smeagol’s Pool in the Two Towers. The bad weather over the past couple of days was evident here as it fell with ferocious power. On my last trip to New Zealand I had been able to jump off the top with some of the others from my bus, but there was no chance it would have been safe on this occasion. The walk is only around 1km return trip with a few stairs down to the bottom so suitable for most fitness levels.

Our other side trip was to Mangawhero Falls which has an even shorter walk to where the scene of Gollum fishing in the river was filmed. It is up the mountain road but is very pretty and worth the detour.

Unfortunately as we were driving through the National Park the cloud clover meant we were unable to see any of the peaks the we should have walked through the previous day so we continued the drive south towards the capital. We checked into our room at the Apollo Lodge Motel and then went on an almost fruitless mission to find anywhere we could get something to eat ending up at a terrible restaurant that had sold out of almost everything (my Christmas meal ended up being curly fries) and was jam packed as it pretty much the only place open.

Our evening was spent chilling out, Facetiming our families back home and enjoying the beers we had bought each other as presents from the Hobbiton Movie Set gift shop.