The Tongario Crossing

Well guys, Hannah and I just did the most amazing one day tramp (walk) one can do here! It's called the Tongario crossing and you basically climb up onto a plateau with active volcanoes, which you then walk across!

We got up at 5:15am, had breakfast, got on the bus and started walking at 6:30am...it was still dark at this point and so we had the joy of walking and seeing the sun rise over the mountains.... I can definitely say that it was absolutely amazing! The first challenge came in the form of a very steep climb up on to the plateau....it took us the best part of an hour, but once on top the view was breath taking!

From here you can take a detour by climbing up Mt Ngaurahoe which has a distinct cone shape.....but we didn't do that....we just carried on towards the red crater. To get to the top of that crater, we had another stiff climb, and by that point I was freezing because it was so windy and most of the walk was in the shade....brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! But once on top - the highest point of the track at about 1900m - you had the lovely view of a huge Blue Lake in the distance as well as the three emerald lakes.... Hannah and I were feeling cold, until we were handed a nice warm rock from the ground....turns out: warm your bum on the ground! You're on top of a live volcanoe! And that's exactly what we did!

The trek down that crater was very steep and slippery so I took big side steps to get down...basically I was sliding down! I got down in under 10min..... what had originally taken me a whole 30 min to climb! We made our way past the three emerald lakes.... two of them were brilliant turquoise in colour while the third was deep blue and had bright red plants growing in it! The contrast! A bit further along and another bit of a climb, we came to see the large blue lake up close and personal....Amazing! We sat and had our lunch here. From here most of the track was just downhill. We came past a hut where we stopped for a desperate loo break. Funnily enough they were busy cleaning the loos, by means of a helicopter transporting the septic tanks to the nearest parking lot…..nice! Flying loos! What ever next?!?!?!?! Hannah and I had this vision of one falling down and: *** SPLAT!!!**** Lol!

Well, the track down was less tiring on the heart muscle, but boy did it do our knees and ankles in! Poor Hannah felt a good crunch as her left ankle gave in….so we had to bandage that up nice and tight! Other than that, we had a really amazing 8hr walk…. A bus picked us up and dropped us off at the hostel….After all that, we just decided to have a bit of a restful evening…..ended up having a good chat with an American there, about to do the crossing the following day….

Righty, now going to upload photos! Yey!