Tongariro Crossing

For our third night in New Zealand, we were staying in the Chateau Tongariro, which we have been affectionately calling The Overlook.  When you turn on the long road up to it, and with the snowy mountains in the background the similarity is eerie.  The hotel is older, and kind of has that old world charm to it. 

We checked in and asked about the hike we were supposed to be going on the next day.  (Note: In New Zealand they don't call it hiking, they call it tramping.  But I am going to call it hiking so as to avoid saying I went 'tramping' all day - this is a family blog people!)  I had been watching it for a couple of weeks, and almost every single day it had been cancelled due to weather and high winds at the top of the crater.  But for us it was set to be All Go!  So we had a nice dinner there, and then turned in early to get some sleep before such a long hike.  Ok, you got me, we have been going to sleep early every night.  Partially because of all the activities making us tired, partly because we are old. 

The next morning we got up and went to get breakfast and met some other Americans who had just done the hike the day before.  They said it was one of the worst things they've ever done and that it was bone chilling cold and rainy most of the hike and they were miserable.  Sooooo, that was not really what I was hoping to hear, but on we went anyway!  And we got SO LUCKY.  The weather was 100% amazing all day.  We had read that we needed thermal under clothes, plus several layers and a rain jacket.  So we were constantly peeling off outer layers because we were so warm!

The Tongariro Crossing is a full day hike.  It is 19.2 kilometers (which I think is about 14 miles), and the first half is a LOT of climbing up to the top of the red crater.  We had to take lots of breaks to catch our breath because it was hard and the altitude made it hard to catch your breath sometimes.  We walked right past Mount Ngauruhoe, which was used as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies.  Then once we got to the very top, we overheard a person who was guiding a group of people talk about how they filmed the battles that took place in Morder in this valley we were looking down at.  I just sort of nonchalantly joined their group for a while to glean as much LOTR trivia as I could!

Once you finish what they call the hardest part of going up hill to get to the top of the red crater, you are rewarded with these amazing views and the Emerald Lakes.  There are just these random pristine bodies of water that range from emerald green to a light blue.  They are absolutely stunning, and I just marveled at how these unbelievable lake just exist somewhere so remote.  So we took our time around there and took lots of pictures before starting the mostly downhill hike to finish up.  If you are thinking going downhill the rest of the way seems easy, yikes, it wasn't!  We basically were walking at a downward incline for almost 3 hours.  So your knees are pretty mad at you by the end.

The shuttle drops you off at the beginning and picks you up at the end, and we all of the sudden realized we had been lallygagging too much and had to pick up the pace to make it to meet the shuttle in time!  So the last couple of hours we were hauling it downhill.

Once we finished we were totally beat.  But it was such a feeling of accomplishment!  I have never hiked this far in my life and it was definitely one of the best things I've ever done. 

That night we took showers and ordered room service because we were TIRED.  The next morning, we had to get up kind of early because we were heading to our next location - Wellington! - for, you guessed it!, more Lord of the Rings tours.