After a lazy day, lounging about at Sue and Roy's, we hit the road and stopped at Ohakune for fish, chips and a battered mars bar. While we were queuing we noticed that there were a few campervans in a car park and after a couple of enquiries decided to stay the night there. The All Blacks were playing South Africa so all of the pubs were packed, but the game had just finished when we got there and everyone had gone. After a quick pint, we retired to the van and spent the rest of the night complaining about Betty (what we've named the van). After three nights of luxury, putting beds out, climbing into sleeping bags and having little room to maneuver really sucks.
We intended on spending the next day in the national park but missed the turning and ended up in Turangi, at the north of the park. The Tongariro National Park was one of the main locations for Lord Of The Rings, it doubled as Mordor and Mount Doom- I'm not a LOTR fan but those places sound cool. It was a nice drive though, it's not often that you see a volcano covered in snow. In Turangi we did a walk along the river, it wasn't the most picturesque walk we've done, in fact the first 20 minutes were spent walking on a path surrounded by bits of wood and dead trees... It got better as wr went on and saw a load of trout fishermen standing in the water. There wasn't much else to do in Turangi so continued north up to Taupo.