Our arrival in Auckland was pretty stressful! We'd booked our first few days of activities around the fact we only had three days to get to Nelson and before then we wanted to do the Tongariro crossing, south of Taupo, which was supposed to be the best one day tramp in New Zealand. Our timing became even more tight when we found the only ferry we could get to the South Island was early Christmas eve morning, so we had to spend that night in Wellington. This left only two nights, which would both have to be spent around the Taupo region so we had to go straight from the airport to the intercity bus station to jump on the overnight bus, which left under 2 hours after our plane landed! this would have been fine in my mind, until I was told it was a 45 min bus ride from the airport into the city! So we ran off the plane, loitered around in baggage reclaim until the rucksacks appeared, ran to customs, waited in a long queue, declared our muddy boots, went to the section where they disinfected them, had our bags re-x-rayed and then ran out of the arrivals gate into the terminal. I managed to find the shuttle pretty quickly, but had to run and find an ATM in order to pay for it, then run back. By this point, apart from being exhausted and extremely stressed, it was already 45mins before the bus departed from Skycity! Luckily, we found out that as it was sunday, the trip should only take half an hour so we actually got to the coach in plenty of time and settled down for the 6 hour trip. It was pretty uncomfortable as coaches go, and I've already been on a lot this trip, so I drifted in and out of consciousness for most of it, generally with a stiff neck. I was awoken at one point by a horrible smell - it turned out to be Rotorua, which is in a volcanic region and has a lot of sulphur in the air, I was quite glad we were only passing through! I stayed awake just long enough to try and work out what shape the neon christmas decoration on a nearby lampost was, and being able to liken it only to a jellyfish I gave up and went back to sleep! We arrived in Turangi at about 2am and were dropped off at the information centre. The town was tiny and deserted! We wandered around for a fair while looking for any of the landmarks described on our hostels direction sheet and finally found it and luckily, the keys they'd left out for us. The only part of the plan we hadn't worked out was how to get to the start of the crossing in the morning but it being a major tourist area we assumed this would be easy. We were wrong. The map that came with the key to our room told us there was a shuttle bus so that was fine, it just didn't say when this was. Unfortunately despite our best efforts and the logistical nightmare we'd encountered to try and fit in this tramp, we arrived at reception at about 7.40, 10 mins after the last shuttle departed, and were informed by Greg, the manager, that there were no other buses going and the town didn't have a taxi service (how is this possible???!) Disaster! After a lot of disussion and begging on our part he managed to get in touch with one of the drivers of the "hotbus" who was on his way back from his last drop off and convinced him to run us up again. This was amazingly nice of them as it was a good half an hour drive up into the hills, so we are extremely grateful to Peter and Gus who between them managed to get us to our destination! The down side was although Peter dropped us off at 9.30 we still had to complete the walk by the time the last bus left in the afternoon at 3.30. This gave us a maximum of 6 hours to do a walk that is supposed to take 8. Hmmmm.

We set off at a fairly rapid pace, over pretty, flat, marshy land which had boardwalks in all the soggy places. The mountains to either side were incredible, and it was pretty obvious why they chose to film the Mount Doom bits of Lord of the Rings here! We were playing walking football, so every time we overtook we gave ourselves a point and if we were overtaken we conceded one. We gave this game up when we got to 20-2 and caught up with about 30 people having a rest! The first side trip off the main track was to a soda spring, which involved crossing a boggy section that left Arwa with wet feet for the rest of the day. My jungle boots kept me dry, but I could already feel their stiffness and was beginning to think breaking them in on an eight hour hike may not be the most sensible idea! On several occasions we caught up with a Brazilian guy who appeared to be carrying his whole life with him - apparently it weighed 35kg! He had plans to spend the night in one of the huts on the track and go up to the summit at 2 in the morning to be at the top for sunrise - rather him than me! We were on strict time restraints so we didn't get a chance to do any of the side trips to the summits unfortunately. We just tramped on, through the most bizarre changing weather conditions imaginable. It was kind of cold, and mainly overcast, so sometimes we were walking through cloud, then it would be sunny, then we walked through patches of snow. Weird. There was a pretty steep climb to get to the shoulder between a couple of peaks, then there was a large crater - filled with echidna looking patches of yellow grass and low lying cloud. After this, another shoulder over which there was the dramatic red crater which was really spectacular. The highest climb in the tramp followed this which was pretty steep and generally on loose scree which was pretty hairy, but not as hairy as trying to get down the other side which was steeper and looser! The good thing about this though was it meant we had to go down fairly slowly, so got twice as good a view of the emerald lakes at the bottom - beautiful! The terrain changed after this and after a brief walk through some snow it became grassy and covered in scrub and started to generally wind its way downhill. We were doing ok for timing but weren't the 2 hours ahead of estimates we needed to be. We got to the final landmark - the hut at Ketetahi. Peter had told us we needed to be here by 1.30 as its estimated as 2 hours to go after this, but it was probably possible to do it in and hour and a half. We got there at 2 so hoped he was right! We tramped on, down and down further and further. It was pretty hard going on the knees as although the path was reinforced with wood for the steps, they were really high, so we were constantly taking massive steps down them. The scrub soon changed into weird English country garden style plants which then turned into damp forest. There were no landmarks in the whole section so we had no idea how close we were to the end and had to keep speed walking. After walking past a pretty stream we turned a corner and were at the end - at 3.24, 5 hours and 55 mins after starting. Peter wasn't even there yet, but when he got there he was very shocked - and impressed to find us waiting for him! He had assumed he'd have to hang around for us!
We were fairly sore and tired after our 6 hour hike and less than 5 hours sleep the night before and after realising actually how small Turangi is we just stayed in the bar at the hostel, brushed up our pool skills and invented a cocktail we called the "Turangi". Greg had already introduced us to L & P - lemon and paeroa, a NZ version of lemonade which was really nice, so we added this to some gin, and there you have the Turangi! yum. We used the washing machines and the slowest tumble dryer in the world and after a chinese takeaway where our eyes were definitely much bigger than our stomachs, we went to bed with our still-damp-laundry hanging all around us! Greg managed to get us a free lift up to Taupo the next day with Michelle, another of the hotbus drivers. It was great to see the lake by day as we had only passed it in the early hours of the morning on the intercity. We dumped our rucksacks at the intercity depot and headed back to the hotbus bus stop to get a short ride up to the "craters of the moon". It was a collection of steam vents and mud pools that were fairly interesting, if a bit smelly. The scenery was not as spectacular as we'd seen the previous day but it was definitely different! After a quick tour round this we jumped on yet another hotbus to continue our speed tour of the north island and went to look at the Huka falls, a set of waterfalls which have a massive amount of water flowing over them due to a drastic narrowing of the river at that point. They were pretty impressive but once you'd seen them that was it! We caught our third and final hotbus - this time with Peter again, which was nice, back to Taupo and we headed to the lake to have some lunch overlooking it. It was incredibly windy while we sat there and everything on the table kept blowing over. After we'd eaten we ran across the road to take photos of the lake and this is when we encountered the umbrella attack. We were minding our own business, looking at the lake, when the wind picked up and on a random glance back across the road I saw two huge table umbrellas rolling out into the traffic - in our direction! One just kept on rolling, the other started flying towards Arwa, twisting wooden leg end first in the process. She made an attempt to grab it, but it twisted just as she did and flew towards me, I made a rubbish attempt to grab it too, before it flipped over the fence and jumped 30m, down the cliff into the lake! oops. The waitresses from the cafe didin't seem that impressed with our feeble apologies for not catching it, but it did nearly kill us so we didn't feel too bad!
Our intercity left from Taupo shortly after and whisked us down to Wellington where we were spending the night. We got some great views of the Tongariro National Park as we went but the trip was slightly spoilt by having a couple of very strange people in the seats behind us that made us feel pretty uncomfortable, and happy when they got off! We were dropped off in the city, fairly near the hostel so after dumping our stuff we headed out to get some food. The hostel had given us drinks vouchers for the neighbouring bar which we used on the way home and got to hear the best beat boxing we'd ever heard while drinking bourbon and coke - the only palatable drink on offer! shortly after we went to bed, ready for our trip to the south island tomorrow...