Whakapapa Mountain Village

We awoke to knocking on our van window. Oh shit! When you know vans are checked for self-containment and that we didn't have our sticker yet, you put two and two together surprisingly quickly! You assume the worst and wake up immediately off the adrenaline rush. Talk about a guilty conscience. Jenna to the rescue! Of course, we were already certified. And when Jenna showed the officer a copy of our signed application form, he was content and moved on.

We drove to the train station in "National Park", the town for their facilities, cleaned up and relaxed to recover from the previous day. We ran into the hitchhikers again, but this time they were waiting for the train.

We planned to spend the afternoon in and around Whakapapa (pronounced "fakapapa"). This is a village based around wintersport but has many hiking trails in the summer. It has a large chateau, which looks impressive under the looming Mt Ruapehu. A reporter had been sent here a few days before a large eruption. Through patience and a good deal of luck, he managed to capture it on camera. A very well-done information center (i-Site) explained the region's volcanic history.

Mats jogged a 6km loop to loosen up after the Tongariro Crossing. It took him past two nice waterfalls and onto an escarpment overlooking the surrounding landscape. Mt Ngauruhoe was as symmetrical from this side as the view from the hike the previous day. A perfect cone. And Mt Ruapehu dominated the view to the other side. A well-defined edge of a lava flow from Mt Ruapehu gave a good impression of how much material can be released during an eruption. And "ranger Mats" found an oil-looking substance on the edge of the river and reported it to the i-Site. After sharing pictures and a call to the head-ranger for the park, we were assured that it was a bacteria that formed the rainbow coloured film on the water.

With our minds at ease, we drove to another small walk to a waterfall. We joined the cue of seniors scrambling up the staircase. The falls plunged into a large pool, which we later learned was Gollum's Forbidden Pool from Lord of the Rings. Nice!

We backtracked to another campsite on the East side of Lake Taupo. We planned to cut across to the East coast. We relaxed on the edge of the water, cooked ourselves a feast of large mussels and enjoyed the beautiful sunset over the water. Ahh...Read more