Our cross back over to the North Island was pretty uneventful as well. The ferry company has it right, they put on a Johnny Depp movie and lull you to sleep. When you wake up, the movie is over and you're almost there. The last time, they played one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I tried to keep my eyes open to catch most of it. This time, however, Chocolat did not fare so well. Although the did play Pinocchio after that and both of us did manage to catch most of that one.

The rest of the day Friday we spent driving back up to Tongariro National Park. We arrived in the small Whakapapa village before 5pm, just in time to check into the DOC office to see if the weather was looking good for a Saturday hike. Much luckier this time, it was! We set ourselves up at the only campground in town and set off to feed ourselves well and gear up to hike in the morning.

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a 19.4km one-way hike through Tongariro National Park and follows a trail up and around the volcano of the same name. The park encompasses 3 volcanoes and the crossing leads you up and between Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. There are great transport providers in town that will pick you up in the morning at your campsite, drop you off at the start of the trail and pick you up at the end of the day. We took the 8am shuttle and started our hike just before 9am. It was a fairly still, cloudy morning, with the tops of the 3 volcanoes in the park obstructed by low cloud.

The first hour of the hike is on relatively flat ground leading up to the towering peaks. The first steep uphill climb leads you to the South Crater on Mt Tongariro. This was a nice flat valley between the peaks and a break from the climb. The clouds had lifted nicely once we got this far and we even had a bit of sun. Once we crossed the crater, we had another steep climb to our highest point of the day, the Red Crater. This was definitely my favorite part of the hike - an active, still smoking vent to the volcano. And the rock along the deep crater was bright red, the same colour of the lava I imagine it might've had long ago. It wasn't as crazy and sulfuric smoky as Villarica in Chile, but from every angle it was just plain cool.

The descent from the Red Crater was fun (although I may be spoiled after our hike in Chile because a tobogan would've been great too, if there was snow), it was quite steep but the ground was a lot of loose rock and almost sand-like so you could carve into it easily and climb down pretty fast. This track led us into another crater, the Central crater, which held the Emerald Lakes, gorgeous, vibrant volcanic pools. These lakes with the red crater in the background gave this hike and it's landscape an other-wordly feel.

We continued on to the Blue Lake and began our descent from the volcanoes. We both still felt energetic and even though we felt the hike was winding down, we still had another 7km to go! We could catch a shuttle back to town at 3, 4 or 5 o'clock so we knew we had lots of time. We crossed the last checkpoint of the trail just after 2pm and had just over 4km left. The way down was winding but not too steep. We wound our way through bush and scrub before entering a nice old beech forest for the last km or two. We had done so well all day but I tell you, those last 2km were painful! But so worth it. When we finally reached the parking lot, we were exhausted but so pumped! We had an easy meal back at the campground and toasted our day with wine from our tour in Blenheim.

Sunday, we lazily worked our way north, stopping a few times along the way since we didn't have far to go. We decided to spend our last night in our Rocketvan back on the coast and made a little detour to Raglan, a small surfing town on the West coast. From our camping spot, we were about 20 meters from a stage set up in a public park. We arrived about an hour before the start of a local Christmas concert! From 5 to 9pm, a variety of different bands played all sorts of music, including some Christmas tunes. It was great and we could just chill out at the van and take it all in. They even had a tiny little pipe band that piped it's way in and play some familiar marching tunes - all 6 of them! 4 pipers and 2 drummers!

Today, we continued our trek back up to Auckland and handed in our beloved Voyager Rocketvan. I think it's probably about time - in our delirium Saturday night with the hike and wine, Mark decided the big orange van was his pumpkin shell, where he's kept me very well. Time to head to Fiji me thinks...one more night in Auckland and we're on our way.

New Zealand has been incredible. It had been great to spend 3+ weeks camping around the country and seeing as much of it as time would allow. It has definitely helped us test our limits and do things we didn't know we were capable of (ahem, skydiving or say hiking 19+ kilometers in 7 hours!). The natural beauty of this country is astounding and I would recommend it to anyone - there is definitely something here for everyone.