Day 100 - Tongariro National Park
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
101
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Wanganui,
New Zealand
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Our alarm went off at 5:45am so that Katie could get herself organised to be ready for our 6:25am bus to the drop-off point for the Tongariro Crossing, one of the best known and best loved walks in New Zealand.
I rolled over and went back to sleep for a precious 15 extra minutes while Katie showered etc, as like most blokes I need less time to get ready!
Katie eventually came back to the cabin and said "you missed an amazing sunrise over the volcano, the sky was all red and it looked so beautiful". To which I replied "sounds great, did you take a photo?", and Katie rather sheepishly answered in the negative. D'OH!
Naturally by the time I'd sprinted outside, all the sky colours had vanished; I HATE it when a good photographic opportunity gets missed :(
We'd already packed last night (after watching the first Lord of the Rings film in the communal lounge, like the layabout dossing backpackers that we are!), so we were ready in no time and took our seats on the mini bus.
There were 12 of us in total on this early morning (zombie) bus to the start point of the walk, and everyone else looked like I felt: knackered.
Before I go any further, I should point out that in New Zealand they don't call what we were about to attempt a "walk" or a "hike" or even a "trek", they call it a.... "tramp".
Don't ask me where the hell it comes from, but everytime I hear someone mention the word my inner karaoke Frank Sinatra pops out and sings "THAT'S WHY, THE LADY..." at the top of my lungs. Not good.
Either that or I imagine us staggering up hills in smelly clothes carrying cans of Special Brew. I'm not sure which is worse?
Anyway, the Tongariro Crossing "tramp" is an 18.5km (approx 12 mile) hike between two famous and usually very scenic volcanoes; Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe, and leads you towards yet another volcano further down the trail.
One of these volcanoes is best know as 'Mount Doom' of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, hence why we were watching the first movie last night, as a 'refresher' so that we would recognise it!
This is what it looked like from the main building:
Weatherwise today started well, we could clearly see both volcanoes from our accommodation, so HOPEFULLY we would have even better views on the crossing.
What we didn't know at the time was that those two early glimpses would be absolutely the best views we would have of either volcano until we left the area this evening!
This was the other volcano which was visible just before we left, also from our accomodation:
We were dropped off at the start of the tramp on schedule at 7am, with a local weather update suggesting "mostly cloudy with a chance of rain".
A more accurate prediction would be "don't get your £^%$*# hopes up!"
It started off cloudy, and didn't get any better.
Oh well, we were here now, so we just had to enjoy it!
This is a map of our route, it's funny how a long challenging trek normally looks like a stroll in the park!
Katie and I both love walking at the front of a group, so we practically sprinted off first and built up a good distance to the couples behind us.
We dislike being surrounded by other people on walks like this; it's so much nicer when you have space & time to appreciate what you're seeing.
As soon as we hit the trail the clouds descended and almost completely covered both volcanoes, it was hard to even see where they were!
See what I mean?
It was also bloody FREEZING, so despite wearing a thermal top, a polo shirt, a hoodie and a waterproof jacket I could still feel the cold.
We tried our best to appreciate the beginning of the trek, because we were pretty sure it was going to be the most enjoyable in terms of weather as we continued to climb up into the clouds.
The early part of the tramp was mainly boardwalks, which was a bit boring but at least there was no danger of turning an ankle or anything.
About an hour into the walk we reached the first point of interest, called 'Soda Springs'.
We could see a nice little waterfall but it looked fairly boring so we avoided the short detour to get closer and ploughed on.
Shortly afterwards we hit the first steep climb of the day, which would take us up to the South Crater, 200 metres above us.
We'd got about 1/3 of the way up when we reached the cloud cover, and bearing in mind that clouds are essentially condensed rain vapour, it started to get a bit wet!
We also couldn't see much above, below or beside of us! The views were obviously going to be INCREDIBLE today!
This first climb was quite hard work, but we got to the top about 45 mins ahead of the guide time, after a few quick breaks to catch our breath on the way up.
During one of these breaks a lone Irish guy from another group went past us, which wasn't a problem because he wasn't from our group. We HATE being passed! ;)
As we got to the top of South Crater, the view was... absolutely rubbish.
We could have been anywhere, rather than on one of the most scenic walks anywhere on the planet!
We thought we'd finished the tough first section, so were a bit surprised that there was no signpost marking where we were. The simple answer is that we weren't there yet!
About 15 minutes later, we reached the signpost, and couldn't see a bloody thing!
We had another steepish climb upwards, and soon reached the very top of the South Crater.
At the top it was like being on the moon! It was so weird up there, mainly because we were covered by clouds and could only see about 10 metres in any direction!
Check out the glorious views!
Shortly afterwards we came to the start of an even steeper ascent, up to the 'Red Craters'.
This climb was really hard work, we were climbing up to a height of 1886m above sea level, so the air was a bit thinner, and colder, and the wind was really howling through us.
We both had 2 hoods and a cap on, but the wind still screamed into our exposed faces, and into our poor cold ears!
Underfoot it was very rocky, which got slippery in the wet conditions and quite tiring to clamber over.
A couple of times we wondered what the hell we were doing climbing nearly 2000m in freezing temperatures with almost zero visibility, but these shots of clarity were soon a blur of random thoughts again...
We pressed on, and eventually hit the summit of the climb about 3 hours into the tramp, on a path carving between 2 of the volcanoes that I mentioned earlier.
I'm sure the view would normally be absolutely spectacular, but today we couldn't see a bloody thing, we were lucky to be able to see each other!
It was so sickening not to be able to see anything, but at least we were enjoying the walk.
At this point we were caught up by 2 young guys from our group, so we let them past while we conserved some energy.
As soon as we started our descent we upped the pace, whipped past them, and no-one passed us again the whole way down. Legends ;)
It was hard to see why they called this area the "red" craters, everything around us looked distinctly grey!
As we descended through the craters, we managed to just make out a couple of the famous 'Emerald Lakes', named after their bright green colour. They must have been bright if we could see them through all the gloom, put it that way!
The terrain now changed into a type of large gravel, which meant that we could slide a foot or so downwards, you just had to be careful not to turn an ankle. Apparently this is where most of the accidents on the trail occur, and that's usually in good weather!
We made it down to the next change of terrain safely, which was essentially channels worn through the hillside and the usual exposed rocks and roots to negotiate.
These narrow paths took us through the 'Central Crater' area, and as we were still at high altitude it was still very cold and very wet.
To our left was allegedly the imaginatively named 'Blue Lake', but to be honest it could have been the Empire State Building and we wouldn't have seen it!
We were walking pretty fast at this point, we were really on a roll, probably because we knew that we weren't far away from the Ketetahi Hut, where we were going to rest and eat our packed lunch, which we'd made last night when cooking dinner.
It was a 2 hours descent through the central crater to get to the hut, which suddenly appeared like a shadowy oasis. Boy we were glad to see it, we were tired, wet and starving hungry.
We were walking so fast that we actually caught up the Irish guy who passed us earlier, which pleased us no end; we even started to seriously consider a career in two man polar-tramping ;)
There were signs on the hut asking us to remove our coats and shoes, and to leave them outside (in the freezing cold), so we were good little boys & girls and did as we were told, despite the temptation to keep them on!
We dived onto the hard wooden benches as if they were the softest luxury cushions in the world, and about 7 seconds later were demolishing our lunch. At 10:30am!
No-one else joined us for about 1/2 hour, but just as we started to wonder if we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and were in the wrong hut, some of our group joined us. Naturally we tried our best to give them the impression that we'd been here for hours! ;)
The hut itself had no heating (apparently they can't use gas if the visibility is too poor for a rescue helicopter to land?!), and as we were covered in sweat from our excertions, we were soon as cold inside the hut as we were outside it! Clever.
We were miles ahead of schedule (the guy from our accomodation was due to pick us up at 2pm and at this rate we would be back to the collection point before 1pm), so Katie called from the hut to ask if he would be able to please pick us up an hour early, as the vast majority of the group would also be finished by that time.
He told her that no, he was "busy", so we would have to wait until 2pm! What a prince.
After we'd got called him most of the names under the sun and finished our food, we dressed and pushed on with our descent.
The walk down from the hut was the easiest yet, but it still had some tricky bits.
We saw quite a lot of snow & ice around us on the way down, which was weird but I guess we were pretty high up...
Of course I couldn't resist going to have a play in the snow!
The best thing about the way down was that about 45 mins from the hut, we ducked under the cloud cover for the first time in about 4 hours and got a great view over 2 of the local lakes.
It was a lovely view, but also gave us a very clear reminder of all the amazing scenery that we'd missed from the top of the climb, where amazing views are normally all around you.
I had an amazing view of a lot of horizontal rain, and Katie's butt, which is not unattractive, but it's not quite in the same league as the beauty of New Zealand's scenery?!
We got to the car park collection point over an hour early, but it was much warmer underneath the cloud cover, so the last hour had actually been a pleasant descent, through scrub land and then forest, past waterfalls and lakes.
The bloke from the hostel arrived late (typical), but we were too tired to care, we'd been walking for just under 6 hours but had really taken our foot off the pedal on the way down as there was no point getting to the bottom with over 2 hours to kill!
We got back to the hostel, paid up, and pretty much got in the car and headed south!
There were some nice spots on the way, but we only stopped a couple of times as we were both pretty beat from the long walk.
This was a waterfall which we saw from the side of a road.
We decided to drive as far as we could until Katie got tired, and we made it to a nice little town called Wanganui on the south west coast.
We found a lovely hostel near the centre of town, with a nice double room and a big garden containing comfy hammocks & a trampoline!
There were also a couple of rugby balls & footballs hanging around, which I LOVED kicking around like an 8 yr old kid! No change there then ;)
As you can see below, at least I'm not the only big kid here!
We had a fantastic meal in the flash restaurant next door, which was a really good move.
It was a bit pricey, and certainly not regular backpacker fare, but hey, we figured we deserved it after our long and tiring day without much reward!
Lamb Wellington with sourdough pastry anyone?
Unfortunately I've got no chance of watching the HUGE Liverpool game tomorrow morning (no pubs here will have ESPN on at 8am!), big gutted but fingers crossed....
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
