After flying to Auckland and renting a car, we drove to Tongariro Crossing. We passed through Lake Taupo, which struck us as touristy and not very pretty; we were glad we didn't make it our destination.
On day 15 we woke around 6:10am to hike the Tongariro Crossing. It is billed as one of the best one-day hikes in the world. A bus took us to the beginning and picked us up at the end. It was very crowded, but it didn't bother me. Tongariro looks like the moon (see photos). One of the peaks was portrayed as Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings. The hike lasted about 8 hours - tough but doable. We:
- hiked up to Mt Doom but didn't go up it (would've required our being on hands and knees for two hours)
- Went to the summit of Mt Tonariro
- Hiked past the "red crater" (see if you can identify in the photos - very impressive)
- Had lunch by the Emerald Lakes and nearby steam coming out of the rock
- Hiked out through the blast zone of a volcano that erupted last in 2012
Afterward we drove two hours to Waitomo, set of our last adventure before heading home.
Photos:
- Mt Doom in the background. We hiked all along the "floor" in this photo
- Red Crater
- one of the emerald lakes
- me, commanding the steam to rise
- emerald lake
Very cool photos, wish we had had the time to do that hike! I will say this in defense of Taupo: while there is not much to see other than nearby Haka Falls, and we only used it as a place to spend the night on our journey south, seeing Mt. Doom in the background while looking across the lake -- all while munching a bacon and cheese biscuit I had just bought at the Taupo Burger King -- was pretty cool. Only lasted a few minutes before the clouds obscured it once again.
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