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Published: June 25th 2008
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Mount Doom
The Dark Lord Sauron must have been on holiday. The Fellowship Of The Van
Having seen enough of cities for the mean time we decided to head up north in the campervan and see where the road took us. We had no set plans for the day so we thought that it would be good to turn into a number of smaller towns on the way to Tongariro National Park.
Tongariro National Park is the oldest national park in New Zealand, located in the central North Island. Situated in the centre of the park are three active volcanic mountains; Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro, the latter of which was used as Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings. There are a number of Māori religious sites within the park, such as one at the grave to Te Heuheu Herekeikei. The summits of Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu are also sacred. In order to prevent exploitation of the mountains by European immigrants, Te Heuheu Tukino IV (Horonuku), the most significant chief of the Māori Ngati Tuwharetoa iwi (or clan), gifted the heart of the national park, to The Crown in 1887, on condition that a protected area was established there.
Today the National Park is used for a number of
activities including skiing, snowboarding, hiking, game fishing, mountain biking, horse riding, rafting and scenic flights. It is still well respected though and the tourist industry has certainly not drastically altered or even damaged any of the park.
The scenery was lovely on the way north and we passed through a number of small county towns off the main road before reaching the National Park. The weather was not so good with a lot of cloud coverage and unfortunately for us the weather was set to get worse overnight with thunder storms forecast for the following day. Unfortunately this ruled out a number of walks which we had been looking forward to.
The Two (Rugby) Powers
We spent the afternoon checking out the local area and information centre before heading to a campsite for the evening. On the way we were lucky enough to get a quick snapshot of Mount Doom as the clouds separated for a minute or two. Compared to the films, it looked a lot less menacing and a lot more snowy. The campsite was in Whakapapa, a small village consisting of the Vistiors Centre, a pub and a large hotel. A number of the
National Park Walks were accessible from the village.
The All Blacks were playing England on Saturday night, so after dinner we headed down to the local pub to watch the game. We arrived just slightly after the start of the game, and the All Blacks were already 13 points up. The rest of the game continued in the same pattern and there was a good atmosphere in the pub between the locals and the tourists. Before heading to the game, we got a wee bit of a surprise when we heard a WW2 Blitz-style siren going off. It continued for a few minutes while we were trying to figure out what it was. We later found out it's the volcano eruption alert (the mountains are active volcanos) although it must have just been a tester. Good job, as we just stayed in the back of our campervan.
The Return Of The Rain
During the night the weather took a turn for the worse and we awoke to a thunderstorm. The visibility was extremely poor, so we knew that a number of the walks were going to be pointless. We had half considered one of the most famous hikes
in New Zealand: The Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This is a seven hour hike over the top of Mount Tongariro and requires crampons, snow boots and gear which could be hired. It sounded amazing but it wasn't happening due to the weather which was very disappointing. They do recommend staying in the area for a few days for the weather which was time we just didn't have.
We also noticed a Lord Of The Rings scenic hike which takes in some of the locations as well as Mount Tongariro itself but only operated in the summer. It sounded pretty similar to the alpine cross but was guided. We headed to the Information Centre where we asked the staff for recommended walks for wet weather and also watched two informative videos one on The National Park Volcanoes and the other on The Māori History of the Area.
Following the videos we headed out in the rain and decided to do one of the short walks to the falls. We followed a very wet pathway down to Tawhai Falls through toatoa and beech forest. The falls, which tumble over the edge of an ancient lava flow were beautiful and we spent
some time at the bottom of the pathway taking photos and observing the flow of the water. Completely soaked we headed back to the campervan and decided to drive onto Taupo as the weather was set to get worse later in the day.
On the way to Taupo we passed Lake Rotoaira however it was unfortunate that the weather was so overcast restricting the view.
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