After leaving smelly Rotorua we headed over to Taupo where we stayed for a couple of nights as we were going to do the Tongariro Crossing; a 19.4km, one day hike across an active volcano and then through some amazing scenery– craters, calderas, sulpher lakes, alpine ridges, thermal vents and sub-tropical rainforest. The Mount in some of the photos is Mount Ngauruhoe, which Peter Jackson used as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. Elaine was Frodo and I was Sam…

It was a really tough day but at the end of it we felt really good, and got to lounge on the beach at Lake Taupo watching the sunset behind the mountains we'ld just climbed. Sweet as!

Photos on Flickr

I thought I'l put up our itinerary so you can all tell where we'll be at certain times. It's fairly straight-forward until we get to Kuala Lumpur, but after things aren't as definite… But in a good way :)

Obviously I'm not putting up an exhaustive list of everywhere we'll be in each country, so you'll just have to keep checking back on the blog to find out our latest adventures.

Here's a Google Map of the route we'll be going on. I'll be posting up our itinerary soon so you can all be jealous…