Tongariro National Park, Day 2: still no hobbits! I want a refund.

Pieke, the lovely guide from our Tui trip who offered to hike the crossing with me, arrived bright and early Friday morning and we boarded the shuttle to the drop off point. On the way she chatted with the bus driver - she seems to know everyone on the island as it is, but she also used to work winters in National Park so this tramp was a bit of a homecoming for her. Given the impending weather, I was even more grateful that she offered to join me on the trek.

The bus driver gave us a stern safety talk before letting us off the shuttle. It's a pretty intense hike (they estimate 6-8 hours of exposed hiking over about 12 miles, winds can be treacherous, visibility can be low to nil, etc) and once you get up there you're pretty much stuck with no means of shelter from wind or rain. They've had to rescue people who head up without water, proper clothing, food - we call them dumb - and as a result, they've really upped the safety warnings in recent years. The girl working at the hostel even said that the shuttle won't take you there if winds are more than 80km/hour. (You can still go on your own, but this absolves them from responsibility.)

But! Off we went, starting from the Mangatepopo car park.

about 20 minutes in,
before we lost all visibility

The first two hours pretty much sucked. Not the hiking - the trail itself was well maintained and fairly easy - but the mountains were completely fogged in and for the most part we couldn't see a thing. I was sad that I missed the peaks and a lot of the scenery (especially since my nerd curiosity was interested in comparing landscape to the Lord of the Rings movie - this is where they filmed the Mordor scenes). At some points we caught glimpses of mountains...

... but for the most part it was this ...

... and this ...

... and a few foggy lakes
(this one was Emerald,
which I bet is gorgeous on a clear day)

Don't get me wrong, I have no regrets. It was an absolutely amazing trek. At times it was like I was walking on the moon - if the moon had really low visibility and red rocks scattered across volcanic valleys, that is.

The good news was, since the weather was such crap, we made it to the hut for lunch in record time (as I recall, we left around 8am and reached the hut by 11:30am or so). Freezing and wet, we rested there for about 20 minutes and then put our soggy boots back on to finish the trail.

hostess with the mostess Pieke

On the way down the weather cleared remarkably. REMARKABLY. In about 30 minutes we started stripping off layers and the balmy rainforest thawed us out.

balmy

rainforest

We reached the end of the trail around 2pm and the shuttle wasn't coming until 4pm. Lucky for me, Pieke ran into some friends and we got a ride back to town. Squeezing into a hatchback with five other people wasn't exactly fun, but they were very nice, it was a short ride and I was so very grateful not to have to sit in the sun for two hours.

That evening I enjoyed a glass of wine with dinner and attempted to read by the fire... and promptly fell asleep by 9pm. Long, good day. The perfect almost-end to an almost-perfect trip.