Up early this morning to walk the Tongariro Alpine crossing. This is a crossing from one side of the National park to the other side climbing to 6 thousand feet. As we drove to the start the high winds were blowing our van off the road. We passed the Sir Edmund Hilary climbing centre as we made our way to the start. We had not arranged return transport from the other end so were only able to walk half way and the retrace our steps. We set off with rucksacks containing warm clothes , food and drink and started hiking. The trail walks up the side of a volcanoes and is well sign posted. It was a glorious day with bright sunshine and windy. As we climbed higher the walking became harder and we quickly found ourselves puffing hard. This allowed us plenty of stops to admire the views. At 5,500 feet we decide not to push our luck any more and returned to the van, surprisingly the next morning our legs weren't very sore and the only damage was sun burnt hands! The sun is very strong here and I got sun burnt on my back when swimming for 45 minutes without sun tan lotion.

After the walk we carried on south through spectacular scenery including snow covered mountains to the west coast and stopped for dinner in Bulls, a small town near our final beachside site. Bulls like many towns has a very limited set of restaurants. We had doner kebabs which just beat MacDonalds a a venue.