Well we picked the weather right, woke up to a beautiful day with all the previous days clouds and humidity gone. We headed down to the Tongario Crossing shuttle and jumped in. We were there for the first stop thank god because the same guy that two days ago told us not to worry about a reservations now seemed shocked we didn't have one and let us know it was a full bus and we were the last two (jackass)! The shuttle drove around to a B&B and a Holiday park to pick us the rest of the hikers then it was off to the trail head. On the road there we saw 4 or 5 large buses coming the other way empty like they had just dropped off a load at the trail head and when we arrived we saw that was just the case, there was probably a good 100 people at the trail head getting ready to start the hike. No problem, we both hit the port a potty then jumped on the trail and the crowd quickly thinned out.
The trail was in Mt. Dooms shadow the entire first half and brought us through several different landscapes all surprisingly desolate especially since almost anywhere else we had been in NZ something green seems to be growing on most surfaces. There were large cliffs around as we made our way up a valley and onto a huge lava flow where the switch backs started and we quickly gained elevation. They refer to this part as the devil's staircase, it was hot and a real workout, and Mt. Doom was getting bigger with every step. At the top we entered two big craters from past massive eruptions and the landscape went from old lava flows to barren flat wasteland that resembled pictures from the surface of Mars. It seemed so strange to walk through this turrain, as we usually walk through some sort of forest, it felt like you should not be there, and when you think about the fact that it is an active volcano and read the posts of what to do if it erupts maybe it is not the safest hike! It is also amazing how beautiful such a barren landscape can be. Soon we starting to climb again through some loose rocks and scree, and made it to another flat part with even cooler views. We saw the red crater, it is really hard to explain, but it is red and black and has a lava shoot that would ooze out a lot of lava. We had our last climb for the day on the opposite side of the crater, at the top we saw the beautiful emerald lakes and steam vents on the trail we walked down. The top was a bit caustic since there was a military camp from austrialia there comprised of about 40 teenagers that were very loud. The trail down was a scree shoot that had us running down it while ducking out photographs. We ate lunch by a large lake in a crater, the color was not as blue/green as the emerald lakes but, it gave us a nice place to eat lunch and get away from some of the other hikers.
The decent to the car park was a few hours of steep switch backs, we walked on private land and got views of the "hot springs" a few vents that were very active, with the strongest sulfer smell I have ever had to breath in. Toward the end it was really bottle necked with hikers all trying to get to the car park to catch the 4pm bus pick up.
We were exhausted after our long day on the trail, and headed to our DOC for the night. We did not have kiwi's and no stomach aches.
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