After a freezing night on the desert road it was time to head back to Tongariro National Park as the transport was due to start running the day after. We were staying in a field owned by the company we were using as it was really close to the pick up point.

It was a really sunny day so we sat out all afternoon, had a BBQ and we could watch the walkers coming down from the Alpine crossing in the distance. We were wishing we'd been able to do it that day as the weather was great but we thought we'd have the same sunny weather the next day ..... we were wrong!

We woke up at 6.30am to fog, cold and drizzle, we weren't to be deterred though as we'd hung around to do this and it was the last available day before we had to move on. We got the bus to the start of the walk and it was still freezing but we set off hoping it would get better as the day wore on. The first part of the walk was pretty easy as a lot of it was on a man made walkway but as you got higher this stopped.

Eventually we found ourselves on the red crater, it was covered in snow and you couldn't see more than 15ft in front of you because of the fog. We could have been anywhere, we were gutted that we couldn't see properly AND it was absolutely Baltic! Luckily we'd bought ski gloves in Okahune otherwise our fingers would have dropped off! We carried on going to the last big climb we had to do, we're not exaggerating here when we say 1) it was unbearably cold 2) it was really steep 3) it was really windy and 4) it was mega slippy as it was slushy, icy snow we were walking up. At one point I was almost on my hands and knees crawling, everyone was struggling, I thought I was going to fall over the edge of the mountain (always the dramatic one)

Eventually we made it to the top to the crater lakes and ..... we couldn't see them due to fog and cloud cover. We caught our breath and moaned about how annoying it was that it had been such a nice day yesterday when all of a sudden the clouds rolled away to reveal the amazing emerald lake, it was beautiful and took your breath away. It made the climb completely worthwhile.

We then had to walk down a pretty steep hill but the ground was covered in a thick layer of ash so it was really slippy, it was a really wide path though so it wasn't as if you could fall off the mountain and the ash was soft so you wouldn't hurt yourself so we just power walked down it. There were 2 girls coming down almost crying saying they had never been so close to death before .... they beat me hands down in the being "overly dramatic" competition.

The rest of the walk was lovely, Glacial lakes, amazing views. It was totally worth hanging around for and turned out to be one of our favourite things we did in NZ. This is a must see destination in our opinion.

Next stop Wellington .......

General points
1) NZ is not our friend weather wise!

2) We're addicted to the following things: BBQ's, Beer, Monopoly, Pak N Save and Warehouse

3) Terry struggles massively going up any form of hill, think 30km an hour. We've taken to chanting his name to urge him on "Terry, Terry, Terry" then cheer when we get to the top! Think we may have a bit of van fever going on :-)