Tongariro Crossing!

---

Hello!!!

The next morning was a mad rush as usual to leave on time, its hard enough getting myself out of bed and packed but ive also somehow become responsible for getting the boys out of bed too as it doesn’t even occur to them to set an alarm! Boys!!!

The Tongariro crossing was absolutely amazing…we were soo lucky with the weather, we were all prepared for it to rain all day but it didn’t rain once and we had beautiful sunshine all day! I think in total the hike took us just over 7 hours, including an hours lunch break! Some bits were really difficult - the Devils staircase and the final uphill bit to the summit- but after lunch it was pretty much all downhill…phew! :o) We were quite quick though thanks to Lisa’s tip of walking quite slowly so we didn’t need to keep stopping for breaks…slow but steady was the moto and soon we were overtaking the boys! :o)

The scenery was absolutely gorgeous - volcanoes, green emerald lakes, mountains etc! It was a lovely day and really fun! The only bits I didn’t like as much was the horribly overwhelming sulphur smell every now and again and also the last couple of hours were quite boring, I think by then we were tired and had had enough and the scenery wasn’t interesting anymore…just fields and woods! But still, we were all really glad we did it and have some lovely pictures! :o) We stayed in an amazing hostel that night, probably the nicest so far - the beds were incredibly compfy…actually like proper beds with big duvets etc and there was a nice hot tub which we all went in before dinner! That night we then just had dinner and had an early night because we were all so exhausted!

Lots of love xxxxxxxxx

---