The Tongariro Alpine Crossing

29 January: The Tongariro Alpine Crossing!

• We stayed the night at the Whatapapa Camping and booked the shuttle bus at 5:45 AM

• Together with 11 other people we were the first ones starting that great walk. The first 45 minutes were really easy. Just normal ways to walk on, no sweating, no complaining, just cheerful walking (and even singing), nice nature until .....

• ...we hit THE STAIRS!

• pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff we have never seen soooo many stairs!

• just endless stairs ...

• devil stairs ...

• our legs were burning

• our feet were burning

• our shoulders were aching

• ...still looking pretty with my pretty backpack

• Loads of complaining for another 2 hours of stairs and rocks to climb up until we arrived at the craters and the green and blue lakes (btw I was pretty impressed by Rick just climbing up that mountain like a happy deer).

• The views were just amazing! Sooooooooooo beautiful!

• Walking down the volcano again was quite a challenge as well (We wished we had stairs to go down, or a slide, or an escalator or anything else that could bring us down more comfortabely)

• Sidenote: Never forget to bring water and food with you! We shared our water with some idiot chinese and german tourists that forgot their water and wanted to drink the water coming down the streams - bad idea as this water is not drinkable and you can actually get very sick from it).

• After 6 hours of walking we arrived a the busstop ...the last 2 hours were again never ending hours. The walk just does not give you a break!

• Summery: It is totally worth it as you see amazing, absurd nature and you will have beautiful views... will we do it again? NO.