The Tongariro Crossing : NZ's greatest 1 day walk

After arriving in Taupo, at the Northern end of the lake of similar name, we made our way to the tourist office. We had quite a few plans but these all changed when we found out the the weather the following day was going to be perfect. The famous Tongariro National Park was not too far away and we just couldn't let the opportunity pass us by. The very helpful folk at the info centre said that there was a lot of snow on the track and they recommended going with a company. We booked and paid and the next morning at 8:15 we set off from the hut.

The walk is truly spectacular and fully deserving of all the praise it receives. In no time at all you are above the clouds, surrounded by volcano's and endless views. If any of you reading this are thinking about doing the walk in winter I would definately recommend going with a guide but please, in summer, go on your own. Tongariro Expeditions, the company we used (highly recommended in the Lonely Planet and many other publications) must have started out taking children to the zoo and they haven't come a long way since. They do show you how to put crampons on and get you from A to B, so I suppose their value would be somewhere in between that of the apple in your backpack and the longdrop at the start of the track.

Also, if any of you think it's a tough walk I can categorically say that it's not. It's easy. The section called the 'Devil's Staircase' should rather be called 'The Smurf's Staircase'. It's, as my dad would say, a little shinny.

Walking the track in winter gives the additional excitement of crampons, which we'd never used before but will hopefully be using again soon, because it is awesome. You feel super-human and can literally walk up a seriously steep snowy slope.

Our lunch stop was overlooking the red crater and emerald lake, between the parks volcano's with the impressive sight of Lake Taupo in the distance, a great spot to tuck into a squashed and soggy sandwich made earlier that morning. As we were leaving I heard one of the guides say that we wouldn't need our crampons for the way down which confused me somewhat, considering our snow-packed environment. I soon had the answer and was sliding down the whole way on my backside.