We have to get Olive out of her parking space by eight this morning, so we depart Wellington early to drive to Tongariro National Park. The Tongariro Crossing walk which Caz and I hope to do tomorrow is supposed to take ‘7 to 8 hours’, though we have learned that these guidance times are mostly vast over estimates.
As we approach Whakapapa, the tourist centre for Tongariro, we can see Mount Ruapehu, aka ‘Mount Doom’, from the road, although the peak is covered by cloud. The galloping forest and grassland terrain leading to the mountain makes me expect to see an army of marauding Orks charging over the ground.
When we get to the information centre, we find that the weather forecast for tomorrow is for gales of up to 90km per hour, making the Tongariro Crossing walk quite inadvisable, unless we fancied flying over part of it. Instead we go for an hour’s walk this afternoon to Tawaki Waterfall which drops fifteen to twenty metres into a pool. It’s one of those waterfalls you can walk around behind it, which I do. I should really start scoring these. This is pretty cool, though maybe not so spectacular as a lot I’ve seen in or around Milford Sound, nor the one in the Aussie Outback where we went swimming. It’s definitely worth a seven out ten though.
We camp at a small DoC site on the edge of the national park. It rains again, so it’s another damp night.
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| 'Mt Doom' |
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| me behind waterfall |
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