On March 28th we said "arrivederci" to Didier, Annie and the South Island and took the ferry across the Cook straight to Wellington on the North Island.
Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and we spent a day exploring the city. One of the things we did was visit the Te Papa National museum where we learned a lot about volcanos and earthquakes; it even had a little house inside that you stand in while it simulates an earthquake! We also took the quintessential ride up the famous cable car.
Now on to the Volcanos! We went to Tongariro National Park which is in the central plateau of the island which contains several volcanos, including the famous Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings (actual name is Mt. Ngauruhoe).
Our first day in the park, we went up to the summit of Mt. Ruapehu; the highest volcano in the park at 2797m and is still active.
The latest eruptions were in 1996 and 2006! What we found funny was that to get to the summit we had to hike through a ski field first. A ski field located right at the base of a volcano that erupts so regularly that they actually have sirens installed on the lift poles, have emergency procedures posted around the resort and have these posters up in the washrooms:
It was pretty exciting when we reached the rim of the crater. We stood there looking down into this massive plateau that is the crater floor.
The colours were so vibrant and impressive
The next day we did the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This is an alpine crossing with about 1000m of elevation gain and runs 20kms through a plateau of volcanos including some active ones (not to mention steam vents everywhere). The crossing only takes a day but can actually be done as part of the four day Northern Circuit Track (an NZ "great walk"). We were incredibly lucky with the weather; it was a clear blue sky!
Once we reached the base of Mt. Ngauruhoe (a.k.a. Mt Doom) there was no question in our minds of not summiting the 600m to take a look down into its crater (after all, Frodo had to do it). The climb itself was pretty tough and turned out to be quite dangerous (more from other people than the volcano itself). The slopes of a volcano from afar look like sand to me. Turns out it's made up of ash, volcanic dust, very small volcanic rocks with a few large volcanic rocks partially burried (i.e. loose). So it was basically like walking up a large sand dune with the ocassional boulder going barreling by as someone accidentally kicks it off... (FYI if you are ever in this situation for the benefit of all other human beings on the mountain with you yell "rock" as loud as you can and as many times as you can). We made it safely to the top (and back down again) and walked the rim of the crater for a good view inside.
The views from the top were amazing
The rest of the hike through the park was incredible!
The next point of interest were the Emerald Lakes which are basically pools of acid water of some type. They are beautiful though
Since we went through some active areas
We did spot a few active steam vents
On the way back down, we had to travel through another active volcano zone from Te Maari. This volcano erupted in 2012. This guy is still very much steaming away
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing was incredible and definitely worth doing! It's a completely different world up there.
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