Tongariro Alpine Crossing

One of the days we went on a 19 km hike, which all of our watches said was more than 19 km, called the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. We heard that it was supposed to rain and we were all a bit apprehensive about doing such a hike in the rain, but when we arrived at the start, the landscape looked so magical with the sun shining through the clouds.


This is the mountain that we are crossing!

Started out as a nice sunny and warm day...

but the clouds rolled in as we increased in altitude. It was nice for a bit because it meant we weren't burning up and we didn't have to layer on the sunscreen.

Some blue geothermal lakes in the middle of the hike, they contributed to the *wonderful* smell that we got for part of the way down.

The clouds blocked our view of most everything unfortunately, and it started raining.

Wow what a view from the top! This trip was full of 0.5 selfies

This would be a lot more stunning if the clouds were not there

This is still an active volcano, and it last erupted about 10 years ago, the steaming area in that photo is where it erupted.


We walked across a large flat plane, and that was just about the last flat thing we encountered on this hike

These hiking boots were awesome, they kept my feet feeling dry, and their surface dried really quickly once it stopped raining! I also wore shorts which was not a popular choice on this hike, but I did not want wet leggings to stick to me. My legs were once again cold on a hike, but oh well.


Waiting for the bus at the end, the hike is not a circuit, and they recommend only going one way. We really got all four seasons during this hike and I was really glad that we finally did a big outdoors activity, we are in new zealand after all and they are most known for the hiking and scenery.

The view of the mountains and the beautiful sunset.

They booked us a motel for the evening and it felt SO luxurious. Each room had their own showers, there were provided towels, it was such a nice break from the hostels where the showers are fought over. We even had a tv and watched bakeoff and then HGTV!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hanoi

Image
Our next stop on this trip was Vietnam! We started in Hanoi and were spending three days here. I also was able to use my credit card points to book a hotel, unfortunately it was a ways out of the city, but taxi's are super cheap so it was definitely worth it. Having a big comfy bed was such a change from the hostels we have been staying in. One of the days we took a day trip to Ninh Binh. Our tour guide called it Ha Long Bay on land, and we opted for Ninh Binh because we are more mountain people than water people. We booked the tour through Viator and it was a whole-day affair with a tour and three locations! This location was the Mua caves and there was a mountain to climb and also some caves to explore. Dragon carving at the top of the long long set of stairs. The views from the top! The many rocks just jutting out of the land were so strange to see, like how? We also took a boat ride at Tam Coc, super beautiful. The people rowing the boats used their feet to push the paddles, ve...
Read more

Osaka

Image
We went to Osaka for two days which I think was enough time. We decided to get the Osaka Amazing pass which includes entrance to a bunch of attractions and also unlimited metro rides. We had mapped out the previous day what we wanted to hit and made a whole itinerary with times and everything because we had to make sure we got through what we wanted to.  Our first stop was the museum of natural history and bottanical gardens. Mat likes to go to science museums and this was the closest thing that was included in the pass. It was a hike to get there and was really underwhelming. No story was really told and it was just a bunch of items with some labels. There were a lot of animal bones though. The gardens had these random beans all throughout one section and we later realized its for the exhibition at night which involves lights. Alas we were there in the morning. Next up was the Osaka zoo which had a surprising variety of animals. The notables included these penguin and a KIWI!!??! ...
Read more

Queenstown

Image
The last part of this New Zealand adventure was a few days in Queenstown. We spent twoish days there as a group and then I spent another 4 days solo adventuring! We had mostly free time here, and we went shopping and walking mostly since this place isn't actually all that large. We had a really nice end of course dinner at Walter Peak High Country Farm which we got to by steamship, the TSS Earnslaw. The weather was cooperating and this farm was SO adorable. Just looking at pictures now gives me such fond memories. The DELICIOUS dinner, 100% the best meal we have all eaten in the last month. It was a buffet with so many fresh veggie options, I ate three kinds of salad and then went back for seconds. Peep the dessert plate! I tried one of everything lol. There was also a sheep shearing demonstration after dinner, and we saw super cute mini cows. After everyone left to go back to school, I had to figure out what to do with my time here. We had already done a lot of the top attractions...
Read more