Trekking Turangi

  Turangi, New Zealand
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The reason for moving on to Turangi was to be able to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, apparently one of the best one day hikes (tramps) in New Zealand.
 
As we had arrived reasonably early in Turangi I had the chance to go and play some golf at the local course and give Maud a break. The course was fairly nice, but the clubs were like a throw back from the 80's which didn't really help my game. I had an alright round, but more amusing was the guy I paired up with at the sixth hole who hadn't worked for 12 years and was a bit of a space cadet all in all.  I'm not sure what he had been smoking but it didn't seem to affect his game as he shot 5 over par.
 
Whilst I had been playing golf Maud had booked a transfer to the start of the crossing (it's a one way route) for 6 am in the morning as we thought we would be slow and didn't want to miss the returning transfer. After some camp stove cooking and a few games of yhatzee (Maud is now even further ahead in points) we got some sleep in especially as we were up early next morning.
 
We got up for the transfer, and after waiting until half past six, rang Kevin the driver who very laid back told us he had picked up two people at the campsite and he only had two people to transfer on his list, needless to say Maud was not amused.
 
We arranged to be picked up at 7:30 am instead and went back to bed for an extra hours kip. After some quick shut eye Kevin our Maori driver (with the biggest white beard you had ever seen) eventually picked us up and after picking up some others at some backpackers hostels we were on our way.
 
The crossing itself is an 18.5 km hike through lava fields, then steep volcanic terrain, volcanic craters, emerald and blue lakes then cardopod forest. It is a challenging hike and takes between 6 and 8 hours, so Helen and I were feeling a little apprehensive even with our experience on the Inca Trail and Volcan Villarica, I think mainly because there were no guides (or porters) and the length of the hike. 

View up to Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom)

The first hour wasn't too bad, basically walking through lava fields on wooden boardwalks, unfortunately we could not see the top of Mt Ngauruhoe (Mordor's Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings) due to the cloud cover, but in hindsight it was better than being too hot whilst hiking.
 
The second hour involved a steep climb from the bottom of the valley at Soda Springs to the South Crater. This was tough climbing through lava rocks which were sometimes as high as your thigh, but eventually we arrived at the top to be faced with the huge crater which we had to walk across next.

The South Crater

  The crater was very impressive approximately 2km across, and was very barren a little like being back in Patagonia again. After crossing the crater we had the second climb up to Red Crater which was about another hour. This again was steep climbing made even more difficult by the volcanic scree terrain and the smell of sulphur now permeating the air.

The start of the climb up to the Red Crater

We were rewarded with glancing views of what we had climbed and the crater we had just crossed but then the cloud began to close in even more. 

Maud who thought she was done with climbing

After the hike up Red Crater we then had a 20 minute scramble down more volcanic scree to the emerald lakes. This was very slippy and both of us ended up on our behinds on more than one occasion, but the view down to the mineral lakes was worth the sore bums.
 

First view of the Emerald Lakes

After lunch at the lakes we decided we would try and make the earlier transfer at 3pm instead of 4.30pm and hiked quite fast through the next crater section towards Ketehai Hut. By now the weather had really set in and the rain was fairly consistent.  We could only see abut 20 feet in front of us so we made the decision to get down as fast as we could and make the transfer.
 
We went downhill through gorse and heathers for about an hour, practically running, until we reached the Ketehai Hut, at which point we knew we were about 2 hours away from the end and would probably make the first transfer.
 
We set of again at a good pace continuing to the cardopod forest. We were getting quite tired and the jarring of the downhill steps was beginning to take its toll on our legs. It was a shame there was nothing to stop for, i.e. to take in the views of what we had done. Unfortunately there was no change in the weather and rather than getting wetter it seemed more realistic just to get down to the earlier transfer as we couldn't see anything.
 
The forest trail seemed to go on forever through huge ferns, cardopods (not sure what these are) with streams flowing beside the trail, but finally we made it to the end in a very respectable 6 hours.
 
It was a shame the weather had been so bad during the walk and we couldn't appreciate the views more, but such is life and the following day in the lovely sunny weather at least we could appreciate what we had done.
 
After a lift back to the campsite from Kevin, we headed to the Golden Fry an infamous Fish & Chips shop in Turangi. The fish & chips were wolfed down in seconds as we were both so hungry after the walk, we then pretty much collapsed for the night in exhaustion.
 

View back up to the crossing the next day

Mt Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom)

The next day we woke up to cloudy weather again, but as we started on the long drive to Wellington, the sun came out over the Tongariro crossing and we got to take some photos of what we had done the previous day.

The Tongariro Chateau Hotel

We took a detour to the impressive Tongariro Chateau hotel and to look at the ski resort which about 10 years before had been hit by an eruption and had been rebuilt on the lava flows.
 
We then stopped for lunch at Waiouru at a train disaster memorial. In the 1980's a crater lake wall on Mount Ruapehu gave way and the flood water descended into the valley an washed away the railway bridge killing 150 people. It was a bit of a sombre place to stop for lunch but was an interesting memorial with all the newspaper reports and a memorial stone next to the river.
 
We then carried onto Wellington, with me taking a few hours at the wheel under Maud's instruction to stay at a campervan site just outside the city.  Once we'd parked up we  got ready to go out and catch a rugby game.