We have now left the township of National Park, in Tongariro National Park, and are stopping in River Valley for the night before continuing on to Wellington in the morning.

Although we were only there for a few nights, it was a truly amazing experience. The views were spectacular as we were surrounded by volcanoes, with Mount Ngauruhoe right in front of our hostel (that's the one that was used as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings), and as it's the middle of winter here they are all covered in snow. On our way through Tongariro National Park from Taupo, we stopped for a couple of hours to do one of the walks, up to a waterfall and back around again, and then spent the rest of the afternoon we arrived just wondering around the little township.

On our first full day in the area we were going to attempt the Tongariro Crossing as it is rated one of the best one day walks in New Zealand, but we were put off by the talk of ice axes & crampons and everyone generally telling us it was really dangerous to do during winter. So as the weather had been forecast as a fine sunny day, we booked ourselves in for a scenic flight over the area instead.

It was yet another early start as the flight was at 9:00am, but it was a fantastic way to wake up in the morning. The flight was about 45 minutes long in a little six-seater plane, but it only felt like we were a couple of feet high because all the scenery we were seeing was so close to us. Apparently we reached about 11,000 feet, so it gives you some indication as to how huge the volcanoes are. We flew over Mount Ngauruhoe, Mount Tongariro and Mount Ruapehu (which is still active today) as well as the Emerald Lakes and the Red Crater. In the distance we could see Mount Taranaki which is the one in the picture.

The whole experience was breathtaking and it just made us want to get even closer to the mountains so today we were back up to Mount Ruapehu for a play around in the snow.

We started off just sliding down one of the slopes on mats, but it wasn't long before we wanted to get on the bigger slopes and have some real fun!! We headed back down to the ski lodge and booked ourselves in for a one day 'discover snowboarding' pass. We had a one hour long lesson just after lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon ploughing through people on ski's when they wouldn't get out of the way in time!! After a couple of hours we were getting fairly confident and reasonably good at the basics, but we had to leave as the weather turned and we had to get our bus back to the hostel before it got snowed in. Needless to say, we are both already hooked and are planning to spend a few days in Queenstown learning how to actually stop before we hit people!!

Tomorrow we head off to Wellington for a few days before we say goodbye to the North Island and head further south to see what is on offer there.