The other weekend we headed north with Chris and his family to do the Tongariro Crossing. Unfortunately I didn't take very many good people shots, so you'll have to be content with scenery!

The Emerald Lakes

The scenery was spectacular and I can see why so many people do this walk. And lot of people do it - there were between 1000 and 1500 people on the day we walked. Although we started walking at 7 am, we were still in crowds most of the time. Sometimes there were big holdups on the track, other times you'd stop to take a photo but would feel rushed because of all the people behind you.

The Blue Lake

There are several craters on the crossing; some with visible steam or a whiff of sulphur, others with gorgeous lakes in them. There were signs warning of what to do in the case of an eruption and there was evidence of lava flows about the place that were younger than most of the people walking the track.

The Red Crater (one of the sulphurous ones)

We stayed at a local motel/cabin/campground complex. Difficult tent peg terrain because the soils are so rocky in these parts! There were interesting hummocks all around, and we were informed by a member of the group that these are all from the debris piled up at the front of lahars. Very cool.

This is one of the residents of the campground. It was a bit grumpy on the Saturday night (and fun to wind up), but much more chilled on Sunday to the point of being a nuisance and getting into everything. It was quite happy to be handled and even started talking to us after a while. I was its best buddy after I turned over a few rocks to expose the critters underneath.

Sylv and I went for a run on Sunday. The first part was the hardest running, across a rock field and lava flows on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu.

The track settled down after a bit and we soon found ourselves running through tussockland and bush. This is Mt Ngauruhoe in the distance - the Tongariro Crossing goes through the low point you can see in the middle of the range. Apparently Mt Tongariro (to the left of Ngauruhoe) used to be bigger until it blew its top!