Activity Summary
Monday 27th February - Day 179
Sky Waka gondola / Mt Ruapehu (failed)
Silica Rapids walk
Tawhai Falls (Gollum's pool)
Tuesday 28th February - Day 180
Luke: Tama lakes
Nicola: Taranaki Falls loop
Wednesday 1st March - Day 181
Tongariro Alpine Crossing
Mt Ngauruhoe
Mt Tongariro
Thursday 2nd March - Day 182
Waitomo & Ruakuri glow worm caves
Drive to Auckland
Summary
Raetihi
If there was any indication of a small town absolutely collapsing this was it. The campsite, petrol station, car repair shops and the library seemed to be the only things left open amongst the almost entirely boarded up town. It was pretty interesting to see.
Tongariro National Park
So different from all the other hikes we had done. The volcanic rocks and scarred landscape was so cool and the National park has a good number of peaks that could be conquered in an unofficial don’t get caught sort of way. The great walk looks like it would be good fun but sadly didn’t get to attempt it this time round.
Accommodation
Raetihi - Raetihi Holiday Park & Cabins
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £16
The campsite was quite a distance from the Tongariro National Park but we booked this pretty late given our drama with the ferry and weather changing our plans but it wasn’t an awful distance away.
The campsite was comfortable enough with an alright kitchen and lounge area although the one roomed building did get quite busy so we didn’t spend much time here. Nothing glamorous but comfortable enough.
Diary
Luke had determined the ideal crossing day would be Wednesday. Everything else we did was kind of a half baked plan apart from that he wanted to also walk the Tama Lakes track.
It wasn’t a terribly bad weather day, a bit grey and cloudy higher up in the peaks so we decided to try our luck with the Sky Waka gondola that gave us easy access up part of the way to Mt Ruapehu, south of the well traversed Tongariro and at its highest point being 2,797m while holding the only glaciers in the north island. From there we could do a short walk as far as we could to get better views.
By the time we had ascended up to the base of the gondola however we could tell it was hella closed. Apparently we should have checked the website in the morning but of course we failed to do that. The almost black devil looking igneous rocks however were pretty cool so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
On our way down Nicola found a replacement walk lower down called the Silica Rapids. It was a very pleasant walk through rather barren shrubland and ending at a river with silica flowing down the white water. Nice and colourful and took us back to the geography of Rotorua.
We stopped by Tawhai Falls on our way back to the main road which is famous as being the forbidden pool where Gollum performed his no.1 chart banger ‘to catch a fish so juicy sweet’. Naturally Luke had to imitate.
Once done with all our last minute activities we had a short debate on what we should do outside the supermarket and concluded we couldn’t be bothered to drive miles to see some not very exciting sights in potentially downpour rains (that never came). So we spent the rest of the day in the campsite.
Penultimate NZ hike for us. Sad times.
We both were going to walk the Taranaki Falls track together before Luke ran off to complete the Tama lakes track by himself while Nicola finished the loop and we met up a bit later.
It was a nice enough day for it, pretty still lower down and dry although cloudy so the impressive summits of Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe never became visible. Pretty irritating for Luke.
The track is very well maintained and we got to the Taranaki falls in decent time. We then parted ways once again, as we had become increasingly accustomed to doing on our walks. Any other time of the day however we barely spent any time apart at all.
Nicola finished the loop pretty quickly and spent the time without Luke watching one of the DOC videos in the visitor centre for a while before playing switch in the car. She wasn’t alone for a long time but was pretty content.
Luke carried on along the track which remained pretty flat until reaching the lower Tama lake. From that point pretty much all of the gradient came into effect and it was all up loose scree. It made it slightly more challenging but it had nothing on Rinjani.
At the top and along the saddle were views of the upper Tama lake and nothing of Mt Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom) as it was enveloped in clouds. At this point the wind had picked up and rain started pelting Luke so it was a very short stop over before descending. He had debated trying to scale Mt Doom from the south side (again not an overly official track) but it is culturally insensitive to the Māori people (aka not allowed technically) and it looked a bit sketch. So he wussed out.
It was a pretty quick hike overall, but it was very easy:
19.22km
/\ 569m
Max elevation 1,427m
Moving = 3hrs 28mins
Elapsed = 3hrs 52mins
Once we were both in the car we drove back to the campsite and again did very little else. Although Luke did feel good to stretch his legs for the first time properly since Franz Josef. He has genuine concern his hiking fitness will just evaporate once we leave New Zealand, he has absolutely loved this aspect of the country and in turn going full beast mode (for him). Certainly has helped the ab game.
The day arrived and Luke absolutely called it. It was pretty low lying fog when we set off early in the morning but once cleared it was a gloriously sunny and clear day all morning. Wonderful stuff.
To do the crossing we had to pay to book a shuttle once parked at the end of the alpine crossing route. This cost us £50 which is pretty steep for a walk but there is no other way to complete it due to enforced parking restrictions and we wanted to do the hike together. Given that absolutely every other hike we have done has been free, we can let this one slide.
Our shuttle was booked for 8am, although we are pretty sure there are multiple vans/shuttles running consistently between 7am and 9am so there is no actual rigid timeline on this. But this did mean getting up at 6.30am to drive an hour north. In turn this meant Nicola wasn’t appropriately fuelled before we started walking at 8.30am but she did try her best to eat beforehand.
We had some great views of the summit of Mt Ruapehu in the morning which made Luke so happy he stopped the car to take pictures. Bloody tourist.
The car park had a great view of the active geothermal vents smoking on the north side of the crossing which was pretty cool so early on.
Once at the start of the walk Nicola tried to eat her packed breakfast but on sight of a massive coachload of kids we got moving.
The start of the walk is a nice gradual walk along a decent path and was probably the first and last point at which it was peaceful.
The landscape changes from shrubland to barren devilish volcanic rock pretty quickly and all looks so aggressive.
There were also crystal clear views of Mt Doom with Luke’s potential route along the saddle clear as day. Sadly the route was officially closed in 2017 for cultural respect reasons and park rangers stop people from walking it now so while Luke would love to do it at some point, today was not the day. This is similar with the summit of Tongariro. His grand plan would have been to do the Great Northern Circuit over two days and tick off all the summits while doing it - or do the 46km circuit in a day without the summits. Man has grand plans.
The Soda Springs was a short detour off the path so Luke went over to have a look while Nicola ate the rest of her breakfast before moving on. The springs were nice and colourful, albeit a bit difficult to get close to with masses of puddles inadvertently creating a Takeshi's castle esq assault course across grass, rock and shrub. No failings this round however.
Once Luke caught up with Nicola we began probably the most challenging part for two reasons; Nicola was all out of energy from a lack of food and the queue to get up the ‘climb’ (it wasn’t very steep for long) was unbelievably backed up from the assortment of abilities doing the walk. This ranged from a group of 11 year olds as part of a school trip, bringing back wonderful UK Snowden school memories for Luke at a similar age) to apparent unfit oldies. The path up is narrow and this means any form of overtaking is reliant on the person in front being aware of their pace and from experience, this never happens.
So we joined the queue that grinded up the mountain side. It did mean there was plenty of time for sight seeing however.
As the climb topped out the queue started to spread out a lot more as stragglers were left behind. There were great views of Mt Tongariro on one side and the wicked copper colour of Mt Ngauruhoe on the other.
The best part of the walk in Luke’s opinion was the incredibly flat and compact giant crater before ascending up to the Red crater. It was incredibly cool with great 360 views of immense mountains and towering crater walls. Nicola also got her energy back by this point.
Another ascent took us to the red crater wall summit with views looking back over the massive crater we had walked across and views north towards the red crater. The walk was a little tough in the part scree, part rock but not too bad.
At the top we sat for some lunch and some couple photos.
From this point we had good views of the red crater. Slightly yonic in appearance.
Then began the downhill. Pretty scree’y but not overly challenging. Luke ran off ahead but Nicola was also a hell of a lot quicker than most. She did almost get wiped out by an old biddy who cut her up but was too polite to push her off the cliff.
From the downhill there were great views over the silica lakes and also the blue lake in the distance. Of course with that came the faint rotten egg smell but it was nothing on Rotorua.
By the time we got to the Blue Lake, cloud cover had started rolling over so this probably took away its expected sparkle so we didn’t give it too much attention as we looped around.
We were now at the halfway point, having done all the climbing and pretty much seen all the great sights. All that was left was the downhill that wound down the north side of the mountain ranges with views over Lake Rotoaira and the massive Lake Taupo in the distance.
This view didn’t change much as we descended so it wasn’t particularly interesting. We sat for some lunch at a makeshift spot just off the path to take in some of these lake views before descending down too far and also had some of the hot silica vents at one point on the mountainside.
Otherwise it became a bit of a slog. Luke’s right knee started playing up and Nicola also had various niggles, all of the above exacerbated by a bit of boredom really.
The home stretch had a short walk along a river before we exited victorious and then immediately were confused. A ton of people were waiting at the end of the official track which led us to believe that there might be a shuttle the kilometre down the road to the car. Nicola had a bit of a stress wobble at this point before we continued the walk back to the car. Now fully successed out.
It was a really nice walk with a whole lot to see. The problems, as determined by Luke, were there are so many people that slow the pace down in a number of pinch points, the last half of the walk is hella boring and the cost to do the walk. It would be made a lot cooler for him to be allowed access to Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe but that’s him being selfish. The walk however is definitely worth it - just not his fave when compared to the Mt Cook National park.
Once back at the campsite Nicola’s DOMs took hold of her legs so spent the rest of the evening lying predominantly horizontal while Luke packed the car for an early ish start the next day.
There was however a lovely sunset view of Mt Ruapehu to sign the day out.
Where we were in Raetihi seemed to be a trap for cold morning fog, and so when trying to take off early we were faced with the problem of pretty heavy condensation inside and outside the top layer and absolutely zero expected sunshine.
Somehow this was the first time we were faced with this problem when camping in NZ but the issue being we needed it dry in order to pack and sell the following day.
So we came up with the solution of packing into bin liners, as we did every time Luke wasn’t able to fully dry it, and hoped the weather near the Waitomo caves was nicer.
It was a fairly long drive to the Waitomo Caves but the power of nature audio books continued to add fuel to Luke’s driving stamina.
We got to the caves early as expected and fortunately the car park was pretty huge. We therefore occupied a number of parking spaces down the bottom in the sun and for about 30 minutes had session 1 in our makeshift sun lounger, hoping it would evaporate as quickly as a typical Brit in Benidorm would burn. It worked pretty well but we ran out of time and had to roll back up and stuff in the car.
The first cave (of the two) we went exploring was the Ruakuri cave. The tour group was fairly large and the tour guide, while being incredibly nice, was using us as her trial run having clearly just started taking the tours. She was fairly uncharismatic in her delivery (Luke is probably being harsh but we did pay a fair whack for this) but more annoying was the tutor, who was assisting where needed, delivering completely unintelligent American style humour that was painful to witness. The 60/70 something loudmouth American as part of the tour group lapped it up naturally.
This tour was pretty cool however. We got to see the glow worms up really close and really appreciate the long dangling butt strings that they use to catch their prey.
The stalagmites, stalactites and columns were cool to look at but we could barely hear a thing most of the time about what was being said as part of the information tour so we kind of switched off.
It also went on faaaaaar longer than it needed to so by the time it ended we did take off pretty quickly. It was however the best place to get the all important photo op.
We whipped out session 2 of the sun lounger in the interval before we took off up to the Waitomo Caves.
Our tour group was half the size it should have been as apparently a load of people hadn’t turned up but this meant it was a lot more enjoyable. The tour guide was a local NZ’er and she was honestly hilarious. She had a wickedly dry sense of humour with a perfect delivery that was so dead pan she had Luke in stitches at pretty much everything she said.
The short tour through the Waitomo cave main cavern (stalactites, close up glow worms, being able to take pictures etc) wasn’t as good as the Ruakuri cave but the tour delivery was much better.
The best part was the boat tour through the waterways in the dark cave. Everyone descends into a boat that is pulled by the guide along ropes at standing head height. The number of glow worms above our heads as we floated down was incredible and we spent 10 or so minutes completing a loop around the cavern taking all these views in.
It was a really great experience. We spent the bit extra for the double experience but on the whole the Waitomo cave had the wow factor.
Session 3 finally got the tent dry and as a nice little goodbye present, Luke was bitten twice by sandflies for the last time in NZ. What absolute unnecessary fuckers.
Our fun activities in NZ were officially over and done. Off to Auckland we went sulking.
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