Going to Tonga'where'o to see the Volc'rain'o

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Day 556 (5/10/08)

One of the most famous views of the North Island is of the three large volcanoes that make up the centrepiece to the Tongariro National Park, Mt Tongariro, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe but it turned out that we weren't going to see it despite our very best efforts. There is a well known walk called the Tongariro Crossing, often touted as NZs best one day walk. We'd really wanted to give this a go but a recent snowfall meant that this wouldn't be possible so we decided we'd have to be satisfied with looking at the volcanoes from a distance.

We left Taupo on a very grey and miserable day and headed for Turangi and a quick stop at the i-site to see if there were any short walks we could do that would give us good views. By this point the weather had closed in even further and the lady informed us that there would be no views for us today and the weather forecast for the next week didn't look too promising either - bugger! We didn't have that amount of time to hang around so decided we might as well pop up to Whakapapa to look around the visitors centre. The thick mist that often accompanies rain here had set in and we were to see very little on our way up. We had a poke around the visitors centre learning about the history of the volcanoes and checking out the pictures to see 'what we could have won' on a finer day. We drove on up to the ski fields to see what we could see, they were closed and the weather was even worse so we could see nothing! We eased our disappointment with a cuppa at the alpine cafe up there and then drove back to Turangi for a lazy afternoon in our hostel.

Day 557 (6/10/08)

We'd allowed a couple of days to explore the Tongariro Park but as it seemed to have disappeared we decided that we might as well start heading north a little earlier than planned. On checking out the chap told us that he'd checked a webcam up near the ski fields and although it was misty up there the volcanoes could be seen at the moment. Eternal optimists we jumped into the car and drove on up there for our second viewing attempt. Over the 45 minute journey the weather deteriorated from pretty bad to really disgusting and we were to see even less than the next to nothing we'd seen the previous day.

Convinced by now that these volcanoes didn't really exist we headed out of town.

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Photos

Cup of tea ...
this really is becomming a habbit