Tongariro Crossing

In our first week of the camper van holiday the things that we really looked forward to on the north island came in at a steady pace. After the adventures in Waitomo it was time to move on to Tongariro for allegedly one of the best walks in New Zealand, the Tongariro Crossing. We decided to come up already the day before the walk, and we got to experience what it is like to stay in a camper van in an alpine environment. The bus is quite large and has a lot of air to heat up inside it, and it is also made of metal which makes for a lot of heat transfer to the outside. All in all, it was a pretty cold experience and hats and gloves came out in the night to add extra heat.

ready to get going

When the morning came we were a bit more tired than usual, but still very stoked to go. It felt like swiss skiing holidays, so not much of warm summer NZ weather at that moment. Luckily we were well prepared for the hike with sunscreen and tons of warm clothes, so we could start the hiking without being too cold.

On the way up (and for the rest of the hike as well) there were tons of people (hope some of the pictures below show it as well). We were hiking on a Saturday (31.01.2012) and that probably added somewhat to it, but weather and timing constraints permitted no other day than this one.

in front of Mount Doom on the way up

We were really impressed with the hiking infrastructure. There were  facilities along the way, and the track was also reinforced to handle the massive amounts of people passing by (with wood and lining).

We were happy to get some good shots of mount doom already at the start of the hike. When we came up higher, the climate got significantly harsher with stronger wind chill, and we were glad to have all the equipment with us, especially the hiking poles. Coming up we got some more nice views over red crater, and after that we could start the flat part of the walk before the descent begun. As the walk is quite long, we felt our legs after finishing, but all in all we were happy to finish it in under 7 hours and making it to the first transit bus to head down to the camp site. Henrik was pretty keen to get out there to get a proper night's sleep somewhere warm, so we decided to set our sights on Taupo, a town nearby New Zealand's biggest lake.