Tongariro National Park - National Parks

December 12, 2011

Tongariro National Park - National Parks - Mt. Doom

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The usual early morning, drove back to Tongariro National Park HQ, and we were hiking by 8:40 AM. We hiked for 4.5 hours up to Taranaki falls, and then on to Lower Tama Lake. Great views of Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom – it’s the classic cone shaped volcano in the pictures) and Mt. Ruapehu. Mt. Doom is a younger volcano only being formed about 25,000 years ago (I think that’s what it said). It was a beautiful morning, and we had the place to ourselves going up – ran into a number of hikers on the way down. The falls were beautiful, and the volcanic peaks were spectacular at this time of the year, still with snow mantels, and the clouds moving in and out, particularly on Mt. Doom. The trail was crushed rock basically all the way up – it must have taken a long time and a lot of money to put the trail in – very easy hiking.

By the way – the National Parks are all free in NZ. No entrance gates or fees, just drive in, and start hiking. NZ, although only the size of Colorado, with 4.4 million people, has “a third of the country set aside and protected in environmentally important parks and reserves that embrace almost every conceivable landscape” (Lonely Planet). It also has three World Heritage areas, two of which we were in/saw – NZ’s subantartic Islands (nope – didn’t see these); Tongariro National Park (subject of this BLOG); and Te Wahipounamu, that includes Fjordland, and surrounding national parks that boast spectacular scenery and the world’s finest surviving Gondwanaland plants and animals in their natural habitats. You know – it’s a gobsmackingly spectacular country.

Back to the hike - A lunch on the trail, and a quick stop back at park HQ, and then we headed down to the Wellington area. We stopped at an isite along the way, in hopes of changing our ferry to tomorrow AM, but the morning and afternoon ferries are all booked so we had to stick with our Friday AM ferry, which was to prove lucky as you shall see, we ended up having a spectacular day for our ferry crossing. After some driving around, we eventually found a campervan park near Paekakariki Beach – a nice place. It started raining as we got close to Wellington. Had a repeat of our delicious Indian dinner, I took a shower, and worked on photos, and hit the hay. Have to dash off to the loo in the rain, before bedtime (although very British – they don’t call the toilets loos, but call them toilets – the British accents make me think loo, though).