Tongariro National park: beautiful moon-land and the real Mordor

After almost one month we left Napier and our amazing job (Jayden if you read this, thanks a lot for everything again, it was great fun, you bad motherfucker ;)) in order to finally get to the South Island. I think this time it will work out, as we already booked the ferry tickets for 17/3. Sad is that our road-trip crew is one man shorter again as Liso stayed in Napier to make some more easy money..

So we hit the roads on Wednesday after work and the first destination was the Tongariro National park, which we didn't manage to do previously due to bad weather. The forecast was looking good this time for Thursday, so we drove until late night to get as close as possible to the start of the trek. The next morning we woke up to a foggy, cloudy morning, but we decided to do it and hoped for the weather to get better during the day. For the trek we "exchanged" one argentino (Liso) for two argentinas, as our two friends (Celeste and Barbara joined us for the day).

The Tongariro National park is the oldest national park in New Zealand and the Tongariro alpine crossing (6hour trek across the National park) is proclaimed as the most beautiful one-day trek in NZ (I even read somewhere that might be one of the most beautiful in the world). The whole area is volcanic active with several volcanos and one of them being Mount Ngauruhoe also known as Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings (the only place where the ring can be destroyed).

I personally, did not expect too much (not to get disappointed) after reading and hearing all the superlatives about Tongariro... After all, it is just a volcanic area with no life whatsoever, so what can be so amazing about that, right? But after seeing it, I cannot find words to describe the beauty, so I'm sure the pictures will tell more:

Reflections in the Emerald lake

Chris and Barbara in the middle of the moon country

Above the lakes. Notice the steam coming out of the mountains - there were several spots demonstrating the volcanic activity by the steam and weird noises coming out of the ground.

And here the demonstration of the past volcanic activity - big crater and lava field

And the spot responsible for it all - the biggest vagina you will ever see ;)

Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mount Doom, 2291m) - the real piece of Mordor

The climb to the top of Mt Doom was the most annoying and boring hike ever - basically just a struggle in the gravel, dust and volcanic stones

But we did it - we destroyed the ring and deserved a victory beer on the summit :)

Big-ass crater of Mt Doom.

After 10.5 hours of hiking this was the goodbye picture of the Tongariro National Park on sunset when we were leaving... Amazing. 

Next plans: weekend in Wellington and Monday morning we should be in South Island.