We were going to go sailing over New Year's, but the weather was awful, so instead we went to Rotorua, Taupo and Te Urewera National Park. The weather was awful there too, of course, but at least you didn't have the option of sinking because of it.

The Ureweras are a *gorgeous* mountain range near East Cape in the North Island. I had never been there before but always wanted to. We didn't really have long enough to do more than just a day trip and a couple of short walks, but even that short glimpse of the area was astonishingly beautiful.

It is a very sparsely populated area; some settlements only recently got electricity. The Ureweras were settled by New Zealand's only mountain dwelling Maori tribe, the Tuhoe (Children of the Mist). It's a *big* area. We had planned originally to go to Lake Waikeremoana, but found we didn't have enough time since the road was unsealed and we weren't in a very suitable car. So we just drove into the mountains a little way, to Whirinaki Forest Park, and did some bush walks in that area. The Ureweras are ancient podocarp rainforest (large-seed-bearing trees such as miro, puriri, and kahikatea) and were quite different from the rainforest you get further north in Auckland.

The birdsong was amazing. We must have heard about twenty different bird species in the first five minutes of the walk, none of which I could identify beyond "Hey, it's that bird that goes like THAT! You know! Those sort of birds!" Leen is in for a rough time when she visits. At one point, we walked under two or more bellbirds having a very loud argument. I don't know what it was about, but each bird was very adamant that he was right. I could have stayed there and listened all day. What an amazing range of sounds they have.

The most impressive thing about Te Urewera National Park is how *separate* it seemed. There isn't any transitional section between the mountains and the farmland outside them; it's an abrupt dividing line with no foothills or gradual change in the scenery. We drove through a gap in a wall of mountains, and it seemed we were in another country. I had this feeling of isolation everywhere we went in the Ureweras.

The national park is over 200,000 hectares and virtually all of it is untouched mountainous terrain. You could spend years exploring it. The 44km hiking track around Lake Waikaremoana is going on the list of "things to do when we have time".

So is the Tongariro Crossing - a one-day hike we picked up info about while at Lake Taupo (where we also spent a day). The Tongariro Crossing is a fairly new track which is apparently rated the best one-day hike in the North Island. It takes in alpine, active geothermal, bush and plains scenery in Tongariro National Park, crossing through the three volcanoes in the park (Mt Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngauruahoe). You'll be seeing it when "Lord of the Rings" comes out because they did a lot of filming in that area. The hike supposedly takes about seven hours in summer - you need ice axes and other "sounds too much like work" gear in winter. We'll definitely be driving down for THAT hike this summer.

Brunnen-"wondering if Sam and Leen would be up for that one...hmmm, any excuse to go check it out"G