Taupo - Wellington - day 56

After leaving Taupo, we drove around the lake and into the Tongariro National Park. The view was absolutely amazing! The mountains and hills and plains are just incredibly beautiful, especially cause there was still snow on the mountain tops. It is also the place where the big battle scene of the second Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers) was filmed! The volcano in that park is the one called Mount Doom in the movie. We drove over Desert Road and passed through a town called Bulls, where the shops all have signs with funny names like Bank-a-BULL, Unforget-a-BULL, etc. We then drove to Wellington and went all the way up to the top of Mount Victoria to get a good lookout over the bay. On that hill is the path where they filmed one of the scenes of the first Lord of the Rings, so Pierre got all excited!! The view was great! In the afternoon, we went to the Te Papa museum in Wellington. It was pretty good, but we were very tired... For dinner we tried the Indian curry offer at the hostel; the food was great, but unfortunately a crazy weird old japanese guy sat down at our table and started hitting on Jerome (the French guy from the couple), telling him that he likes young guys a lot!! We preferred not to get involved in that part of the conversation... instead we hurried to finish up our dinner and went into the TV lounge to watch The Lord of the Rings 2.

Weather: nice and sunny