Kiwis and Lord of the Rings

When you think of New Zealand you probably think of kiwi fruit and the Lord of the Rings movies (or in reverse order if you don't socialize much). Our recent activities have involved both.

On Wednesday we completed a 22.4 km hike through the Tongariro National Park, aka Mordor's filming location for the LOTR movies. The hike was spectacular and we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. This late into the fall hikers are often confronted with sub-freezing temperatures and 30+ kph winds at altitude but we walked the entire trail in t-shirts. The winds were so calm the dust hung on the dirt roads leading to the trail head and even the summit was eerily windless.

The hike was a microcosm of New Zealand's diversity of landscape - the trail passed through valleys of lava flows from past eruptions of the volcano, vivid green-blue mineral lakes, hillsides steaming from the thermal pools, brushlands, and dense forests with rushing streams.

The volcano (Mount Doom from LOTR) in the background. You can see the lava flows (dark brown) from previous eruptions.

The white in the center of this picture is steam from the thermal pools (reeks of sulfur).

These pools get their vibrant green color from the minerals in the water (if you look closely you'll see hikers in the lower left hand corner and get a sense of the scale).

When we arrived in NZ we were shocked to find the kiwi fruits in the supermarkets were imported from Italy. Yesterday we visited a kiwi farm in the middle of the kiwi region to find out the answer to this mystery as well as learn a little more about Sarah's favorite fruit. As she is quick to point out, the kiwi is a super food- one kiwi has the vitamin C of two oranges, the potassium of a banana, and the fiber of a bowl of bran flakes (so don't eat too many or you won't want to leave the house). A Rutgers University study ranked the kiwi #1 out of all fruits for its nutritional content.

So why no native kiwis in NZ? It is just about harvesting time for kiwis here. All the fruit is picked off the vines in April and May when it is still unripened and then moved into cold storage. A kiwi can last up to 10 months in this condition and they recently out of last year's crop, hence the Guido kiwis. We also learned that there are about 10 different varieties of kiwis, although only two are exported because the others don't last long enough (the green variety we mostly see a slightly sweeter and less hairy gold variety). We have been fortunate enough to enjoy one variety that is only available in NZ and only for two months of the year - the kiwi berry. Imagine shrinking a kiwi to the size of a cherry. The skin is soft so and hairless so can pop the entire thing in your mouth...delicious!

In between Modor and Kiwiworld we visited a couple caves. The caves in NZ are much like the caves in the States with one very cool exception - glowworms. The glowworms aren't actually worms but the larvae of a type of fly (apparently they were having trouble attracting visitors to the 'glowing maggot caves' and so they started calling them 'glowworm caves' despite being technically inaccurate). Like spiders, they produce sticky threads to catch their prey, only the strands hang straight down instead of forming webs. The worms then produce a small bluish light from a chemical reaction to attract insects to their traps.

When there are thousands of the glowworms on the roof of the cave it creates a beautiful scene, which is unfortunately difficult to photograph, but it looks similar to the night sky. We took a short raft ride through the caves in carnivorous eel infested waters (being fed goat chunks by our guide in the photo below). I still don't understand why Sarah wouldn't go on the tubing trip through the caves (no joke, this was an option).

We've now moved on some towns along the coast. The scenery and beaches rival that of the Caribbean - we just wish the water was as warm.

.

And if you are wondering about the other things that come to mind when you think of New Zealand, yes, there are tons of sheep and you see them everywhere. Flight of the Conchords - they love it. On Air New Zealand we even got to watch the first two episodes of the much anticipated second season. Arf arf! Do the doggy bounce!