After having lunch home at Tauranga, I drive alone to National Park. It’s about a 3 hour drive. I have been looking forward to playing my favourite CDs as loud as I choose, without Marie complaining. But only two of my six CDs play, and only two songs on those two CDs. The CD player has been a bit erratic of late. So I had to listen to the boring radio, or travel in boring silence. The trip seems to take forever. I miss Marie’s constant chatting.

(When I got back home I discovered that in my haste I had put two CDs in upside down. When I fixed that and ran a lens cleaner CD they all worked perfectly. A lens cleaner is a CD with a little tuft of hair glued to the surface which cleans the laser lens of dust as it spins.)

Soon after Turangi I turn off State Highway 1 on to Highway 47 to drive to Whakapapa village. Whakapapa is the Mount Ruapehu Ski Village up in the mountains. The ‘Tongariro Northern Circuit’ track that Raymond and I plan to walk begins in this village.

As I drive I can see the volcano Mount Ngauruhoe, that we also hope to climb, over to my left. It looks rather dark and menacing and enormously high with the cloud level less than half way up.

Volcano Mount Ngauruhoe in distance

I eventually turn off Highway 47 and I drive up Highway 48 to Whakapapa village.

Mount Ruapehu, which is also a volcano, and a 1000 feet higher than Mt Ngauruhoe, looms larger and larger. I soon see the classy Chateau Hotel at the entrance to Whakapapa village.

The Chateau Hotel and Mount Ruapehu,
 another volcano in the background.

I find the Skotel Lodge where Raymond and I are booked to stay tonight.

The girl at reception tells me that Raymond has already arrived. She gives me a key to our room in a block of motel units on the far side. As I walk back out to my car, I see Raymond coming across the car park.

He directs me to where he has parked his car, behind the motel rooms, if you could call them that. They are solid wooden rooms running off a single corridor with a large communal bathroom across the hall. Cost is $60 a night for a twin shared room with all linen supplied.

The Skotel in Whakapapa Village where
 we stay the first night

Back of view of Skotel where we parked our cars

We leave our packs in the room and then walk down the road to the village centre and DOC (Dept of Conservation) office. The sun is shining now and it is quite warm. Whakapapa is a small village, mostly rental chalets, dominated by the huge mountain looming up behind.

We find the DOC office located in an up-market Volcano and Skiing Museum. We buy our hut passes from a petite and bright Asian girl. Cost is $20 a night each, $120 total for three nights,

We then tour the small museum which is quite well done. In the centre of the floor is a 3D model of the whole mountain area. Mt Ngauruhoe looks imposingly large and steep.

Scale model of the area in the museum

We then decide to drive up to the ski lifts, higher up Mount Ruapehu. Raymond drives us in his car.

On the way up we see a water reservoir made from wooden planks, rather like an old fashioned barrel. No sign of leakage.

Water reservoir made from wooden planks

Excellent wide smooth road. I remember the last time I brought the children up here about 18 years ago, it was a dangerous gravel road. We could only get so far in our stationwagon before the wheels started to slide in the ice. The only other alternative back then was to pay for a ride up in the big commercial four wheel drive buses.

Road up Mount Ruapehu to ski lifts.

Very impressive scenery as we climb higher. We see thick, cream-coloured, moss-like soft plants growing everywhere on crinkly lava rocks. We stop the car and have a closer look. Raymond says that these are called ‘vegetable sheep.’

Thick, soft, moss plants growing on the lava rocks.

We also see signs of what look like heavy scouring and erosion from giant flash floods. The mountain is so steep that I would imagine heavy summer rain would cause flash flooding. Winter rain would of course fall as snow.

Signs of heavy water scouring.

The nearest mountain peaks look extremely craggy in the afternoon sunshine

Craggy Ruapehu peaks

Next we pass an impressive line-up of snow-making machines, parked in lines on a large flat tar-sealed area. They appear to be just powerful fans with lots of high pressure water jets. They are electrically powered by huge thick cables. Again we stop to have a closer look.

Snow-making machines

Raymond has a closer look.

We soon reach the top of the road. This is where the ski lift takes skiers higher up the mountain. The ski lift is closed for the summer months and the whole place is deserted.

All around us, perched on the barren rocky slopes are large ski chalets, nearly all of them named after New Zealand towns.

Ski chalets at the top of the road.

We drive back down again to Whakapapa village, and Raymond buys some more food for his tramp.

We then drive further down the road, back towards the main Highway and decide to stop at a signposted short walk to a lahar hump.

Lahar’s are debris and water flows from volcanoes. The humps are mysterious small round hills or humps that dot volcanic landscapes where lahars have been known to occur. There are all kinds of theories as to what might cause them.

We walk along the track in the shrubbery to this particular signposted hump and climb to the top. In the distance we can just barely discern other lahar humps. Not particularly impressive. (Did not show up in a photo.)

We then drive back up to the Skotel, leave the car there and walk back down to the village. We peep inside the plush and old world elegant Chateau. My original plan was to stay tonight in the Chateau, until I found out that the price was $160 per night, per person. We see well-dressed waiters and hotel staff everywhere. They are also adding on to the building at the back. Raymond takes a photo while I sit on the lawn.

The plush and 'old world' Chateau.

We then walk on further to a pub, and share a large, peppery hot pizza. We seemingly have to wait forever for it to be cooked.

When we get back to the Skotel we try Raymond’s homemade muesli bars. However the grains seemed to have a strong, burnt-scorched taste and smell. Raymond tells me that the recipe calls for the seeds and grains to be lightly scorched in the oven. I suspect they have been overdone. I believe the recipe has great potential however. Raymond likes them as they are now. We also have a piece of Mum’s fruit cake.

This will be the last cooked food I will eat while on this four day tramp. As an experiment I want to try out an all-raw food diet. Many healers swear by this for excellent health.