On the road to Mt Doom!! But forgot to take my ring with me!!

After a very nice party for New Year’s Eve, I didn’t waste my time and on the 1st I directly get on the road to start visiting the north island. My goal was to reach the Tongariro National park, it’s about the middle earth of the north island, some huge volcanos.
But in the north island it’s a bit more difficult to hitch hike, too many road, too many cities, too many people … so I had to stop in a small town called Wanganui on my way. It’s a very nice town with a very nice river close by, it is very nice spot for canoe camping, but as I’m low budget and on my own I can’t really do that :(.

 So after a night in wanganui I finally reach a very small town just in front of the Tongariro national park with the very original name : “National Park” there is absolutely nothing in town but it’s the closest to the Tongariro.

I wanted to do a 3 or 4 day hike in the national park, in the middle of the volcanos. But as it’s the holidays for almost all kiwi, all the campsite were fully booked so I decided to do only a day hike there.
Few weeks ago one of the volcanoes in the area erupted so some track were closed due to the very high risqué of a new eruption.

The hike is really great in crazy and amazing scenery, I really loved it, but there was way too much tourist on the track.

The track goes on the side of Mt Ngauruhoe, a very big volcano, the one used for Mt Doom in lord of the ring. I decided to climb on top of it to destroy my presious to get a nice view over all the area and see the crater. The walk up was a bit hard but was ok. And the view from the top was amazing, just a bit cold as the sun ran away and there was heaps of wind.

However the way down was just amazing and crazy, it took me about 1h to get on top without taking any break. But the way down took me less than 10min. The ground was a big mix of small rocks, sand, and dirt (I think you can see that on some part of “the return of the king”) so it was very slippery, it was a mix of walking and skiing. Each step I took I was sliding few meters at the same times, that made the way down awesome and veeery fast !!