The Tongariro Crossing

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WOW, once again. I guess I am repeating myself, but New Zealand rocks! We headed out at 5:30 am this morning (which really was not too much fun, but the sunrise over Lake Taupo and the mountains made up for it) and were picked up by a shuttle bus that drove us to the National Park and the starting point of the walking track of the Tongariro Crossing. It's a 17 km walk up and down, over lava fields, passing by emerald colored sulfur lakes on the higher plateaus, and the whole time, "Mt. Doom" is to your right when heading up the track. The trail was quite comfortable for the first 1 hr or so, which was a nice warm-up, considering that we started walking at about 7:15 am, and it was quite frigid and the wind was blowing. However, the weather was simply fantastic, not a cloud in the sky, and like it usually works with hikes, eventually we worked up quite a sweat. The Devils Staircase was the next challenge after our little warm-up, and it was everything the name suggests! Scrambling upwards over a rockfield for about another hour and a bit . However once up top, we reached another plateau before we hit another short climb to the top from where the views were just spectacular, and the Emerald Lakes were visible below us! Although i started the trip with some of my fellow Kiwi friends, our different stride length showed at the staircase, and so i forged on up, and ended up hiking the remaining 4 hours or so with Jason from Canada, stopping at every turn for more pictures and taking in the scenery to etch it into memory!! What a day. We stopped at a beautiful spot on the lower part for our lunch break and met up with some other hikers at the one tracking hut on the mountain, before we descended into the rainforest below to head to the carpark where we took of those hot hiking boots, and soaked in the sun for a while, until our fellow hikers had all reached the bottom and our bus picked us up to drive back to Taupo! What a day. I can feel my feet, my legs, and in general just a feeling of elation and joy to have had another wonderful day on this journey! Tonight, we are all gathering to share the stories of the day and reflect on the day, and catch up with our other kiwi friends who chose to spend the day in Taupo, before it is onwards towards the East Cape tomorrow.

Vivian, a young girl from the UK, and I are the only ones of our Kiwi group that has travelled together now for almost a week, who are heading off on the Kiwi East Ass trip, and so we have to say our good-byes tonight, and hope to maybe catch some of our friends again on the South Island or along the way! Who knows who we will end up meeting on this trip...

I am not sure if i will have access to the internet for the next three-four days while we are on the East Ass, since we are travelling to pretty remote areas, staying on a farm one night, and a Maori hoemstead another before we come back to Taupo, via Napier in 4 days. So possibly, unitl then...

cheers and keep smiling 😊

SL

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