In the middle of the north island there are three major volcanoes that make up the Tongariro National Park – Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. It is New Zealand’s first national park, and houses two of the most active volcanoes in the world. Plus, Mount Ruapehu is the famous Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings so it’s a big LOTR fan destination. John was supposed to snowboard down Mount Ruapehu back in September but the weather ended up being bad so he had to change plans. Luckily for me, that meant we had a hotel reservation we still needed to use and I got to join!

We stayed at the Adventure Lodge in the town aptly named National Park, and mostly had the place to ourselves. It seems most people only stay there a night or two outside of skiing season, so our five-night stay really gave us a chance to hang out with the lodge employees. It was the longest we’ve stayed in one place since getting to New Zealand and it was a welcome change!

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Widely regarded as the best day hike in all of New Zealand, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a pretty epic journey through an active volcano zone. Mount Tongariro last erupted in 2012 but hasn’t shown much activity since (and thankfully kept up that trend while we were there). It’s a point to point hike, so most people hire a shuttle to take them to the start and pick them up at a designated time at the end. It can be a pretty dangerous hike if the weather is bad so they cancel the shuttles pretty regularly and people usually set aside a couple days to make sure they can make it up. Luckily we chose a beautiful weather day on our first try!

The hike itself is a little over 12 miles, 2,800 feet elevation up, and 3,900 feet elevation down. That’s definitely a more intense hike than we typically do, but we were more worried about the downhill than anything (our knees like to remind us that we’re aging). A lot of people that don’t typically hike must attempt this trail because there were constant signs describing how difficult the upcoming section of the track would be and to turn around if you were getting tired. Apparently an average of 2 people per week have to get helicoptered out! We thankfully were not part of that statistic 🙂

The first half of the trek is up the mountain, across a lava field, and up to the Red Crater. This is the peak of the hike and truly otherworldly, if you told us we were on Mars we probably would have believed you. You then make your way down to the Emerald Lakes, three absolutely beautiful sulfur lakes where we had lunch and were so happy to rest our legs that we didn’t even mind the smell. After one last climb to the Blue lake, we started the great descent. Overall it took us 6.5 hours and was definitely one of the top things we’ve done in all of New Zealand!

Waterfalls

There are several beautiful waterfalls in the area that we also got the chance to explore.

• Taranaki Falls – a great little hike that we did mostly in the rain but was absolutely worth it.
• Waitonga Falls – John did this hike alone the day after we did the crossing because Christine’s knees needed a rest day (apparently John is superhuman).
• Huka Falls – an amazingly strong waterfall with 200,000 liters of water passing through it every second. The sheer force was impressive!
• Aratiatia Rapids – each day the Aratiatia Dam opens to let water through – as a tourist attraction but also as a normal dam operation. For 20 minutes we watched the river get increasingly more full as the water was let through and it was pretty cool! Not quite as quick and dramatic as we were expecting, but also something we’ve never seen before.

We’re so glad we were able to make use of John’s hotel reservation before we left the country. By far one of the most unique and unforgettable landscapes we’ve ever seen!

Christine