The Tongariro national park is a large mountainous region about 6hrs south of Auckland (as the bus drives) and contains what is advertised as the best one day walk in New Zealand, if not one of the best in the world. For the majority of the year the top of it is covered in snow, as it goes over the saddle between two fairly famous mountains. Mountain one is the Tongariro mountain, of which the whole park is named after. Mountain two is mount Ngauruhoe which is best known for being the location filming area for mount doom in Lord of the rings! It is an active volcano and one does not simply walk up to it, you have to catch an earlier bus and then scramble to the top.
I have wanted to do it for a while! Pretty much since the start of summer when the best walking season started, and then as the days ticked by it got more urgent because I really wanted to do it before the snow came back. I managed to talk some coworkers into it and we were going to go after I got back from the South Island, but since I was away nothing got organised and it got pushed back again to… *drumroll* the 4th March! The big risk with these dates was that we only had 3 days off because of the way the rosters worked out, so since it was a day’s travel to the national park on each side that gave us one day in which to attempt the hike. If the weather is terrible, the buses don’t run. If the weather is kind of crappy, the walk is wet and unpleasant.
So we crossed our fingers, booked a hostel and went for it!
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