Tongariro National Park by Plane

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Tongariro National Park

Some things about Tongariro National Park

• The three volcanoes at the heart of the park - the mountains Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu form the southern limits of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Volcanic activity in the zone started about 2 million years ago and is on-going today.
• Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe are two of the most active composite volcanoes in the world
• The fact that the volcanoes are still active doesn't bother people from skiing down their slopes and hiking to their craters. But they do have a monitoring system that provides early warning of eruptions.
• Ruapehu had the honour of playing Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
• The mountains of this national park has deep spiritual significance for the Maori people. Legend has it that the high priest Ngatoroirangi was frozen in a snowstorm while exploring Tongariro and called to Hawaiki, the traditional Polynesian homeland of the Maori, for fire. His prayer was answered, via the channel we now call the Pacific Rim of Fire, and the mountain erupted.

New Zealand Continues

Wai-O-tapu is a Geothermal area, one of the most colorful thermal park, with mud pools, crater lakes, and sulphur vents! Its a pretty smelly place as you can probably tell from all the things you will see ... and my face!!

Some things about Wai-O-Tapo

• Wai-O-Tapu means 'Sacred Water'
• Wai-O-Tapu is associated with volcanic activity dating back about 160,000 years and is located right on the edge of the largest volcanic caldera (depression) within the active Taupo Volcanic Zone.
• Beneath the ground at Wai-O-Tapu is a system of streams which are heated by magma left over from earlier eruptions. The water is so super heated that it absorbs the minerals out of the rocks through which it passes and conveys them to the surface as steam where they are ultimately absorbed into the ground. The wide range of colours are all natural and are due to different mineral elements.
• The Geyser Lady Knox has a special trick to her timely eruptions! Discovered by a gang of prisoners washing their clothes in the early 1900s, the geyser erupted, shooting hot water 20 meters into the air after the men had unwittingly poured soap into the spout. Now all it takes to get old Lady Knox firing is a bit of soap every day at roughly 10am!

New Zealand

Here is a first look at New Zealand.

I must tell you that after spending the begining of the summer in LA and getting to New Zealand where its the begining of winter, with the leafs falling and changing colors its a pretty weird feeling! And having all the cars driving the wrong way is pretty scary, we almost got runed over a few times because we looked on the wrong side of the road before crossing!! haha
Then Driving on the other side is a whole other story! every time i wanted to put the turning signal it turned the windshield wipers on! haha Every time, even after driving for 2 weeks i still had it wrong! But driving isn't as scary as I thought, its actually scarier to be sitting in the passenger sit then actually driving!

On the set of Date Night

So on our way back to our hotel in LA we saw huge spotlights and police closing off a street, so of course nosy as we are we go check it out! And they were filming a movie!!! its called Date Night and its with Steve Carell (from the office and the 40 year old virgin) and Tina Fey ( not sure what she played in haha)! So that was pretty exciting we stayed there for about a good 3 hours trying to get even closer to Steve Carell and trying to get a better picture and just watching how it was done! The funny part in all this was that they were filming in the streets of LA with New York City taxis haha. They also had an Audi A8 cut in half to film them inside up close while they where "driving", they made a fake accident with a taxi and filmed over and over the taxi driver getting mad! They also broke the front windshield (but not while they where filming) and Tina Fey got scared and screamed hahah. then right before we left they were putting both half of the Audi back together and starting to pretend shooting at each other! But we didn't stay for that because it was getting really late and we had to move farther back and couldn't see as well!

Hollywood Stars

finding the Hollywood sign!!

So we were told to take the "Dash" bus to go see the Hollywood sign. But they didnt tell us that the bus only took us to the hollywood neighborhood and not the actual sign! (not even close to the sign) we asked the bus driver how far it was and how to get to it and he said its just up the street! so we start walking and walking and walking and finally I asked someone that lived there if we were going the right way because we had been walking for about 15min up hill and we didnt seem to get any closer to the sign. He told me it was just about a mile up and to turn right on a street (that i forgot the name once we got to it) so we are up there and there is 3 different streets so we tryed to see where all the cars were going but of course they were all going different ways! So we randomly picked one. There was alot of cars going to the sign and I told Ben "Men all those cars are going up there anyways, they could at least offer a ride"... ten mins later a guy with a Audi SUV Q7 ( the pretty car behind us) asked us if we were going up to the sign! He gave us a ride up, took pictures of us, and drove us back down to the bus stop! On the way down we stoped in front of some famous MTV guys house (because he had to water the yeard) then he showed us where Madona use to live and where Lindsay Lohans girlfriend Sam lives, (and told us about how they got into a fight and threw stuff out the window haha) anyways that was pretty cool of him to drive us up and back down!

Our Suite in LA

So since we booked all our hotels with hotels.com after 10 nights you get one free night! and it can go up to 450 dollars, but ours was only 435 dollars haha! We actually wanted to stay an extra night and book our free night in Las Vegas at the Bellagio but our bus tickets wouldnt let us change the date. So we saved it for LA which was better because we took it for our last night in the States and our one year Anniversary!

P.S. As you can see we were very excited !

Down Town Santa Fe, New Mexico

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New Mexico

Taos Pueblos

• The Pueblo is made entirely of adobe -- earth mixed with water and straw, then either poured into forms or made into sun-dried bricks. The walls are frequently several feet thick. The roofs of each of the five stories are supported by large pieces of woods.
• the whole roof is covered with packed dirt. The outside surfaces of the Pueblo are continuously maintained by replastering with think layers of mud.
• The Pueblo is actually many individual homes, built side-by-side and in layers, with common walls but no connecting doorways. In earlier days there were no doors or windows and entry was gained only from the top.
• The village, which is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, was designated a World Heritage Site and a National Historic Site in 1992.

Bandelier National Park

Sedona Arizona

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The Grand Canyon

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