Tongariro National park

We left Rotorua with the rain in our luggage! Our next stop is Tongariro National Park with one of the most famous day walks in New Zealand: Tongariro Alpine Crossing. On our way to Tongariro, our plan was to stop on the road at Lake Taupo to enjoy the views of the biggest lake in New Zealand, apparently it's the same size as Singapore😱. This lake got created around 25,000 years ago after a mega eruption. Surrounded by amazing volcanos it is meant to be quite idyllic . As you expect we just saw a big cloud of rain 😂

After a stop in a nice coffee shop, we continue driving to our destination, Whakapapa village, a village at 1000m altitude used for skiing during winter. Because of the heavy rain forecast we checked in to a hotel for the night, our van's living space in the rain is limited to lying down and everything gets wet!

The hotel has a nice kitchen area and communal space so we're lucky that we can still cook the meals we had planned. It also apparently has a nice view according to the pictures, but for now just cloud will do.

Back to our aim of the Tangariro Alpine crossing. This is a 19.6km walk and as its name suggests crosses an alpine environment. To avoid needing to do a return trip there is a system of shuttles, you park your car at the end of the walk and the shuttle brings you to the beginning. The locals don't take any risk for this walk though and if the weather isn't good, the shuttles don't run. Luckily on our 2 full days we had planned to be here the weather was good enough to do the walk on the second day!
On the first day we still managed to do a small walk around the lowlands from our hotel to see a nice waterfall. Good thing about rainy days, the waterfall was plentiful!

It was amazing to wake the next day and, as the ouds had parted, actually see for the first time the mountains around us! There are three volcanos, Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro (happy they chose the most pronounceable for the walk). The walk starts at the foot of Mt Ngauruhoe better known for the fans of LotR as Mount Doom or the place where Frodo needs to destroy the ring! Luckily we had good shoes, a lot of water, food and no orcs chasing us during our walk. It was still a challenging walk! 800m going up all on volcanic rocks or sand, very tough on the legs! The landscape was totally worth it. We started in a bushy plain to then climb up a hard rocky steep hill to arrive in a completely bare plain with a yellow mushy floor (that smelled like rotten eggs) and then go up a dune of lava sand to see some crazy emerald colored lakes! After this point our luck turned on us and we went back down the mountain in a cloud, so we could only 3m around us. This was weird because we were obviously not alone on the walk but at this point we couldn't see anyone in front or behind!
Slowly but surely we make our way down to the end of the walk, passing by nice humid forest. Our legs may be a bit sore tomorrow but it was a great achievement!Read more