After leaving Raglan, we spent four days without WWOOFing. The day we left we went to Waitomo and went black water rafting through an underground river with thousands of glow worms in the ceiling. Next we headed south to Lake Taupo.
Lake Taupo is massive, even bigger than Tahoe. It's 238 square miles and crystal clear. Not only is it beautiful to look at, we had so much fun swimming around and sunbathing. This was the hottest weather we have had in NZ so far.
We swam out about 150 ft with GoPro in hand, to a landing. The water was so clear we could see right down to the bottom. It was fun jumping off the landing and getting back on.
Close to Lake Taupo is Tongariro National Park. We went to the local i-site and planned to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing the next day. On December 15th, we woke up at 5 A.M. and drove into the national park by 5:50. We had arranged a shuttle to pick us up from the parking lot and take us to the trail head. From there we would be hiking 19.4 kilometers (about 12 miles) back to our car across the north-western corner of the park. We started the hike at 7 A.M. and it took us 6 and a half hours total!
About an hour and a half into the hike, the trail started to get steep and the landscape got semi-arid and volcanic. Once we reached the top of many many switchbacks, Mount Doom was in full view.
We felt like we were on Mars walking through this valley!
Onward past Mount Doom (real name before LOTR is Mt. Ngauruhoe), at the highest point of our hike was Red Crater at 6,200 ft. As you can see from the picture, it gets its name from the incredible red soil that surrounds it. Right past Red Crater we began to descend past the Emerald Lakes towards Blue Lake.
We stopped for lunch at Blue Lake and by that point in the hike, the mass of people that had started in the morning was much more dispersed. After lunch we hiked on and the scenery began to seem less dry and volcanic and turned to brush and greenery.
The last 5 kilometers of the hike was through a native bush forest. Just as we thought we were done, with 2 Ks to go, we encountered a wide, fast-moving stream that we had to cross.
Boom...done! We were so proud of ourselves we had to high five! Needless to say we were SO SORE the next day since this was the longest hike either of us had ever done.
