Mount Doom

After a few days in Wellington chilling out and meeting up with my friend Jen, we quickly travelled to National Park Village (what an imaginative name), from which we embarked on the Tongariro Crossing on Sunday. The TC is New Zealand's most famous and popular day walk, taking in as it does views of spectacular volcanic landscape of Tongariro National Park and close encounters with hot springs and emerald coloured lakes. We realised that one of the volcanoes on the route, Mount Ngauruhoe, was the mountain used as Mount Doom in the LOTR films, so we decided to throw in the ascent of it as a side trip. The volcano is estimated to be under 2500 years old, and because of its young age it has a very symmetrical shape. The climb up was arduous and long, made harder by the loose scree. The scree run/slide down was much more fun! Hover over images for some descriptions if you're using Internet Explorer.







Once we'd descended the volcano we carried on with the rest of the walk, which was nice and easy in comparison. The terrain reminded Emma & I of Bolivia, with dark brown and subtly coloured red rocks punctured occasionally by turquoise lakes and the pungent smell of sulphur-infected springs.



This was, and will be for us, the highlight of our trip around the North Island. We are now in Auckland and will be leaving for Australia in the next few days. We haven't had long in the North Island but we're not disappointed because we spent so much quality time in the South Island. Auckland seems like a cool place from first impressions. It's the first proper sized city I've been to for three months since Santiago! It has massive buildings and everythunk!