Tongariro Crossing

The following morning we woke up super early (7:00 AM), to catch a shuttle to head up to the Tongariro Crossing. The Shuttle guy that picked us up was an awesome dude with lots of knowledge about local places, and Maori names and meanings, and the history of the region. Needless to say, we didn’t absorb a lot of it (esp. early in the AM), but it was interesting nonetheless. The Tongariro Crossing was initially where John thought he would propose to Marian, but being a flexible guy, he thought Mt. Maunganui would work better because of the parties happening that day at the Ladenburg’s house – i.e. we could call everyone easily. The Crossing is a highly popular treck over and through three mountains (Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, Tongariro). Ngauruhoe is also known as Mt. Doom from LOTR. The crossing itself was a bit “Planet of the Apes” like, and very cool. We lucked out with the weather – there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The Crossing can be very tricky as the weather changes quickly and quite often, so we were thanking our lucky stars for that.

Here are some of the pictures from the beginning of the walk:



Here we are with Mt Ngauruhoe, otherwise known as Mt Doom and a close up of the mountain:



Here we are with the Emerald Lake behind us:


Here we are on Mt Tongario with Mt Doom in the background:


Here is the Red Crater:


Back with the Emerald Lakes:


Here is the Blue Lake:


Here is our staged picture on the way home where John is pointing at the start and Marian is pointing at the finish:


All in all took us around seven hours to hike the entire thing, 21 kms later. We were thankful for all the good fortune we had on our engagement trip, and Marian was thankful for her new greenstone on her neck! Back to Wellington.