New Zealand - Tongariro Alpine Crossing

After one night in Wellington, we made our way to Tongariro National Park. This was the place where we were going to do our biggest hike yet, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It's a 19.4km hike that takes you up and over a volcano range and then down into the beautiful valley that overlooks Lake Taupo. We were especially excited for it because the mountain we'd be hiking past was Mt. Ngauruhoe...also known to Lord of the Rings fans as Mt. Doom!! The morning of our hike, we woke up really early, as we were catching a 5:45am shuttle from our hostel to the beginning of the walk. Since the walk is one way, you have to arrange shuttle transport to get you to the start and then pick you up again.

The walk started out with a fairly flat bit until Soda Spring, when it started to climb steeply. It was a quite hard walk at times. We made it to Red Crater (half way point) at 9:00am. We took lots of picture of Mt. Doom, the Red Crater, and the Emerald Lakes and then made our way down towards Blue Lake. We stopped on a rock to eat our sandwiches and have a bit of a break and then continued on. The last half of the walk was mostly downhill, which was nice at first, but started to hurt our legs and knees towards the end! We had amazing views of Lake Taupo as we made our way into the valley. We hiked pretty hard the last part so we could make the 12:30pm shuttle back to the hostel. The last few kilometers seemed to go on forever! But, we made it back in time for the 12:30pm shuttle!!

Once we made it back to the hostel, we had some well deserved showers and a really long nap. Then woke up to make some dinner and fall back asleep afterwards! It was an amazing, but difficult hike, and we were hurting for a couple days after!