Day 62, in which I dine on a bowl of smoke and forego the lychee air

We drove the last leg of our Aotearoan road trip today, back down the Coromandel Peninsula and up to the largest city in New Zealand, Auckland. It was very strange to find ourselves among motorways and traffic jams again after four weeks spent driving along the quiet roads which cover the rest of New Zealand. The guide book reports that Auckland is twice the size of London with just 6% of the population, and we found that this puzzle resolves itself in the form of a huge amount of suburban sprawl.

The city centre itself comprises some fairly low-rise buildings choked by an orbital motorway, with just one small cluster of high-rise buildings serving to create the iconic skyline which is broadcast each week – repeatedly and from different angles – on The Apprentice New Zealand. Our hotel, the Mercure Windsor, is right in the middle of town (next door to Deloitte, conveniently enough) and after checking in we wandered around the town to buy some long sleeved shirts and sufficient insect repellent to permanently clear Cambodia of malarial mosquitoes. We found that most of the historic buildings still survive, now housing trendy shops and cafés, and the result is big city streets with a friendly small town feel.

For lunch we went to a food market described by the Rough Guide as 'salubrious', but after our meal arrived we both wondered whether we'd misunderstood the definition of 'salubrious' – confusing it with 'salacious', perhaps – as the atmosphere and food were both dreadful, with light relief provided only by the indoor sparrows (in New Zealand, sparrows play the role which Europeans reserve for rats and pigeons). The ginger chicken and summer rolls made up what was without doubt the worst Vietnamese meal we've ever eaten, and I doubt the honesty of the waitress who recommended it by claiming she eats it every day (if this is true, I am surprised she is not dead – by suicide if not food poisoning).

After a nap we went to the Tepid Baths down by the harbour for a spot of exercise. This pleasingly old-fashioned swimming pool was built in Edwardian times and reminded me of the Goose Green baths I used to visit in Dulwich, although we were less pleased that the majority of the lanes were taken up by a women's polo team, with the paying public left only to choose between the 'Aqua jogging' and 'Slow' lanes.

We wanted an extra-special blow-out meal for our last big dinner in New Zealand, and so ended up at Simon Gault's restaurant Euro on the Princes Quay, which in London terms is like dining at Claridges (or for New Yorkers, equivalent to three Russian Tea Rooms). We were very excited since for the past three weeks we've been following Mr Gault's superb new television programme Masterchef New Zealand. However, while the food was delicious the restaurant concept struck us as a rather muddled experience. A good example is my starter of tuna tartare, which was served with a plume of wood smoke. Heston Blumenthal might have served the smoke under a silver cloche to be whipped away as served, or at El Bulli they would perhaps have served it in a hollow ostrich egg, to be cracked open by the eager diner. Mr Gault, alas, just poured the smoke into a bowl and then stretched cling film over the top, balancing the tuna tartare on top of the cling. It was all rather cheap and, as the waiter didn't explain the dish, I didn't even realise at first that there was smoke inside the bowl and so went to great lengths to eat the tuna without piercing the plastic, figuring it would be unpleasant for my meal to tumble through torn plastic into the bowl below (which Mr Gault should appreciate, especially as next week's episode of Masterchef apparently includes a contestant berated for getting shreds of cling film in their food). When the smoke did finally come out at the end I felt as deflated as the cling film.

The relaxed atmosphere was also inconsistent with the fairly formal service – more fine French dining than relaxed Italian socialising – and this formality all clashed with the upmarket pizza chain décor and 80s-cum-Spanish-cum-Grace Jones soundtrack. We also struggled to understand why the menu emphasised local produce and sustainability, only to be told overly-laboured stories about ciabatta bread flown in each day from an artisan baker on the South Island (I suppose we should be grateful Simon stumbled across this apparently unbeatable baker, otherwise he might have had it all airlifted in from Umbria). The 'good food served well' concept was also lost in the complexity of the dessert menu of which we only understood about 30% (“Spoons of 2012” was especially esoteric, comprising “mascarpone ice cream w feijoa jelly, organic yoghurt & gorgonzola honey egg, berry fizz & honey sphere w lychee air”).

However, we can't dis the poor man too much as – despite his fame and fortune – he was still there at the rock face running the kitchen, and even had the good grace to send us a complimentary portion of garlic fries when he saw us waiting at the bar for our table. I might even go so far as to recommend Euro to friends visiting Auckland, even if Simon did betray me on Masterchef this week by eliminating handsome Andrew Spear merely for making a duff meringue.

Day 61, in which we elect not to sit in a tepid puddle

In need of breakfast, we decided to give the Luna Café a second chance and they sank to the challenge by serving the worst poached eggs on toast I've ever eaten. Still, fuelled for the day ahead we hired snorkelling gear from the second most relaxed man in the world (who seemed largely uninterested in deposits, identity or contact details, simply repeating the Kiwi phrase 'sweet as' whenever the world struck him again as a particularly wonderful place) and walked around the coastline from Hahei beach to the small haven of Gemstone Bay.

It turns out Hahei beach is part of the Cathedral Cove marine reserve, of which Gemstone Bay has been turned over entirely to snorkelling and diving, with buoys outlining the key underwater landscapes. We slipped on our masks and flippers and pootled out into the bay. It was initially rather disappointing – comprising a range of seaweeds in slightly different shades of green – and we made the mistake of exploring a cave in the rocky edge of the bay where the tide played with the idea of smashing us against the rocks. However, after a while we stumbled across a school of large fat stripy fish who didn't seem to mind a spot of company, and they led us across the bay to a larger school of thin shiny fish, deeper down, who also didn't seem to mind humans at all.

Less common was a stripy orange fish (which only Paul saw) and some ridiculous fish with very long noses, as well as an assortment of snails and spiky sea urchins which made me wonder whether I'd ever be able to enter water barefoot again.

We climbed out of the waters with the intention of walking further round the coast to Stingray Bay, but sadly some miscreant (I used a different word at the time) had stolen our sunblock and – in a country in which you burn after six minutes – we were unable to press on without it. We retreated to the village to buy more sunblock, and it was a short step from that to a quick nap out of the sun.

Before handing back our snorkels, we decided to try wearing masks and flippers on Hahei beach. We found that the seabed is peppered with tiny shellfish who live on the sand, poking their heads out of their shells to grab a drink of water. The flippers were a terrific accelerant for riding on waves, and I've started to wonder whether there might not be something to the idea of surfing after all.

Next on our itinerary was Hot Water Beach, which sounds superb on paper but turned out to be a bit of a bun fight. Two kilometres under the beach is a vast chamber of magma super-heated to 175 degrees and directly above this is an underground lake which heats up and flows up to the surface, where its reward is to be trapped in a shallow puddle dug by a rabble of tourists, who then take great pride in sitting in their individual inch of tepid water until it cools down again. We had expected to take part, but as we pulled up and saw how many others had the same idea we just left our yellow spade in the boot and decided to treat the wallowing tourists as the spectacle. This was a much more rewarding experience.

Despite breakfast, we had dinner at the Luna Café since on Mondays The Grange is shut. We were served by a somewhat hysterical waitress who demanded that – as we had not reserved – we should order food as quickly as possible. She explained that the restaurant was about to be deluged by responsible customers who had taken the trouble to reserve and who would of course be given priority over us. We ordered two green curries as quickly as we could, but no one else seemed to bother coming in and the kitchen still moved at almost a glacial pace.

Day 60, in which Paul takes to his bed

Paul woke up feeling dreadful this morning and was largely unable to get out of bed, so we kept the curtains shut and spent the day snoozing and watching Jessica Alba in The Eye and Steve Carrell in Get Smart. Although these were both good choices, the twenty minutes we were able to stomach of Anne Hathaway's Bridewars proved significantly less rewarding.

For lunch I wandered down into the village and discovered that the food market in Hahei is pretty much sewn up between The Grange (where we ate last night) and a grim little place called the Luna Café. Since I only wanted a sandwich I tried the café, but when I asked the lady behind the counter if they did sandwiches to take away she pulled a face which implied she would have been happier working in a morgue where the customers don't ask questions. Alas, Adam Smith would have had a fit as the usual rules of competition have broken down and the Luna Café still thrives, simply because there are only so many times in a row you can eat at The Grange before you become weary of their menu. I certainly still bought us a couple of sandwiches there, once I overcame the waitress's absolute abhorrence of human contact.

By early evening Paul was feeling more mobile so we climbed into our swim shorts and wandered down to Hahei beach. I am running out of superlatives for beaches to use in the blog, so please just apply all those I used yesterday for Ocean Beach. The beach is soft and sandy – I mean really soft, your feet sink into it like snow – and the sea warm and welcoming. There are however very few big waves here, thanks to a row of tiny forested islands lurking far out on the horizon, so opportunities for wave diving were limited.

A dip in the ocean proved to be just the tonic and Paul was soon feeling his old self again, so really it's lucky we came to New Zealand instead of staying in London as god knows what a dip in the Thames would have done. Facing severely limited dining options we returned to The Grange and this time ordered from the pizza menu, sitting outside to create the illusion of being somewhere completely new.

Day 59, in which we are hit by a ten foot wave

Our goal today was to drive north-west from Ohope onto the Coromandel Peninsula, a huge jutty-out-bit of North Island which is jam-packed with spectacular beaches. Our particular destination was the spectacular beach of Hahei, but on route we also popped in on the spectacular Ocean Beach, just outside the gold mining city of Mount Maunganui. The guidebook says Ocean Beach is the safest ocean beach in New Zealand, but thinking about it I may have misheard the caps and Paul may have said that Ocean Beach is the safest Ocean Beach, which would be an unhelpful truism. Whatever the case, it is certainly a glorious stretch of soft golden sand and iridescently blue water.

We decided to swim opposite a fat little island opposite the beach and discovered this is absolutely the best place for frolicking in the waves, as the island breaks the waves in two, bringing the two halves together in a V-shape, cross-cutting each other and making for especially turbulent waters. The waves rolled in ten feet high, and we had superb fun diving under them, riding on top of them or simply letting them strike us face-on.

As we stepped out of the Pacific Ocean onto almost unbearably hot sand we decided it was time for lunch. I wish we had dined in Mount Maunganui, but we decided that was too industrial and drove on to try the small town of Waihi instead. Although Waihi is described in the guidebook as a small mining village, during our visit it seemed more like a ghost town. It was Saturday afternoon, yet most places seemed to be shut and of those which were open we wrote off a pizzeria (because the waitress was busy doing the hoovering) and a bakery (because they didn't appear to sell any baked goods at all - it didn't help that when I asked for directions to the toilet, the baker indicated the back door, which then led me on an excursion to some public lavatories in a park two blocks away).

We ended up in Waihi's branch of Subway, the sandwich chain, and even that was shambolic as the man behind the counter explained they had entirely run out of bread. Four people walked out from the queue in front of us but when we got to the counter I spotted a shelf full of freshly baked bread behind the counter. “It's hot” he explained when I pointed it out. It did not take much effort to persuade him we did not mind.

We drove out of Waihi as quickly as the car would carry us, and didn't stop driving until we reached the small beach town of Hahei. Thankfully, Hahei is a little more switched on than its landlocked cousin and we were checked into the Tatahi Lodge by a very enthusiastic and friendly receptionist who provided us with everything we needed to enjoy our stay, including information on cheap snorkel hire, a jug of milk and a small yellow spade.

Our 'studio lodge' is possibly the nicest accommodation yet, a lovely and spacious wooden cabin with plenty of natural light and a set of double doors leading out onto a charming little communal garden. Better yet, dinner was just round the corner at The Grange, a trendy but cosy bar/restaurant which specialises in serving up North Island-sized portions. Paul's salad came in pieces so large that – as he struggled to get any of it into his face – he compared the effort to a task on the Krypton Factor, while my burger was so large you could have hollowed it out as a comfortable home for an Eskimo. We later saw a couple of old timers from out of town laughing about the size of their fish and chips and taking photographs of their plates.

We slept poorly, not helped by a resident moth the size of an eagle.

Day 58, in which we wear no comedy gas masks

The weather has been very erratic lately, and today our much anticipated boat trip out to the active volcano of White Island was cancelled, which means that long standing plans for this blog entry to contain photos of Paul and me wearing ridiculous hard hats and comedy gas masks have been shelved. We apologise for the interruption to our usual service.

We only discovered the boat tour was cancelled once we were about an hour's journey out at sea. The trip had started pleasantly enough, bouncing across the waves in the sunshine, but it was only once the waves started bouncing over us and there wasn't any sunshine that the skipper figured something was up. I had by this point become so seasick I had to go outside into the fresh air, but at times it was difficult to distinguish the fresh air from the sea, and instead of my stomach lurching with every wave I found my entire body lurching across the deck, clinging to the narrow metal railings for support and refusing the crew's kind offer of a cup of fruit punch.

While the skipper thought we might make it to White Island alive, he didn't think we'd be able to leave. As the island is entirely toxic, with a lake more acidic than sulphuric acid, he sensibly decided this was not a place to seek refuge. We thus sailed back and in our two hour boat trip saw only Whale Island – a conservation centre where they killed all of the rats and stoats and introduced 37 very happy little kiwis – and a somewhat workaday statue of Wairaka (pictured above, with hat). Wairaka is a local Maori heroine who – improbable legend has it – saved the lives of all the women in her tribe. According to hearsay, the women were left in the tribal canoe while the men went ashore to forage. Women are not allowed to paddle, so when the canoe started to drift out to sea they all resigned themselves to death and got on with their knitting ... all apart from Wairaka, that is, who declared “I shall be the man!” and single-handedly paddled them all back to safety. Apparently this all translates as “Whakatane”, the name of the town where the statue has been erected, but I find the whole thing very dubious. For one thing, it seems unlikely the Maori men would so proudly embrace a name and legend which immortalises their neglect of one half of their entire tribe, as well as their misogynistic approach to kayaking.

To fill our suddenly empty afternoon, we returned to Ohope beach in the car and then walked along the coast back to Whakatane. We had not expected the walk to be much more than a sunny diversion, but ultimately it took us through some stunning terrain to a hidden beach inaccessible by car and only accessible on foot during low tide. At times we found ourselves clambering around the coastline over shelves of narrow rock while the sea pounded against our feet, and at one point my interest in a hole in the rocks was neatly rewarded when a surging wave simultaneously revealed it to be a blow hole, which dutifully erupted in my face. The walk also offered stunning views across the ocean to White Island, and ultimately we figured we've seen so much geothermal and volcanic stuff in recent weeks that this was enough of a look at White Island to satisfy our interest.

After a spot of cake in a Peejay's Café in Whakatane, a taxi drove us back to the motel (although it is possible to make a return walk through subtropical bush, we've by this point learned that subtropical bush isn't alone worth the diversion). In the evening we dined at The Quay on Pohutukawa Avenue, where I was served steak frites large enough to fill a family of four, while Paul ploughed his way through duck breast swimming on a sea of cheesy risotto. The Quay's portions were absolutely huge, and during dinner we enjoyed the floorshow of a lady shovelling what amounted to two separate platters of fish and chips into her mouth over the course of half an hour. I guess northern Kiwis have giant appetites.

Day 57, in which we head north to bag our next volcano

Today we tidied up the bach, handed back the keys and drove up to Ohope on the north coast. Ohope is a long, narrow settlement pressed between steep rainforest on the one hand and a long golden beach on the other. The beach is supposed to be one of the best ocean beaches in New Zealand and – although it's only the second we've visited in the country – it certainly knocks the socks off Brighton beach.

We're staying in Jody's Motel, where we were grateful to finally find a large and comfortable bed and fully no flea-infested blankets. Dinner was fish and chips from the other end of town (a twenty minute drive out onto a narrow peninsula, from where you can see huge crashing waves on the lefthand side of the road and peaceful harbour waters to the right).

We stayed in to watch rubbish on the television and allowed ourselves to relax after a week of guerilla warfare against an onslaught of fleas, mosquitoes, wasps and sandflies at the Smokehouse bach.

Day 56, in which we shelter from Rene

Today is our final day in the Smokehouse and our final day of pottering around and unwinding before we get back on the road to See More Stuff. We'd imagined we'd be able to spend every day swimming in the lake, but in truth it's been raining so much it has been hard to build up the willpower to brave the stormy waters. We also thought we'd be able to visit the toilet freely, but as it's about ten feet from the back door we've learned to hold it in during the storms.

Apparently the storms are a by-product of something called Cyclone Rene, who is coming to visit over the next few days after tearing apart Tonga. Thankfully it sounds like most of his rage was used up in Tonga, but it still doesn't bode well for what we hoped would be a week spent exploring the sunny beaches of North Island.

Day 55, in which we peer at Mabel's Paint Pots

Today we drove north to explore the geothermal wonders of Rotorura, halfway between Mount Doom (which marks the south end of this particular stretch of volcanic activity) and White Island (which marks the northern end, which we're due to visit in a couple of days time).

Our first scheduled stop was Wai-o-tapu, one of the top geothermal visitor spots on the North Island, and we had to floor it (while safely comfortably within the legal speed limit) as I had taken too long over breakfast and the illustrious Lady Knox Geyser only shoots off once a day at 10:15am sharp (this is not an example of Mother Earth's wonderful time keeping. The geyser erupts when a bored looking man pours some soap flakes into the crater, breaking the surface tensions sufficiently to let the super-heated gases below escape. The guidebook reports that this is a tried-and-tested method first discovered by some presumably very surprised female prisoners who had been clearing bush in the area and had stopped at the geyser to do some laundry in the hot spring).

We got there with only seconds to spare. There were about three hundred people straining to look at the geyser, and room for about fifty to do so comfortably. I peered over the shoulder of one man and saw the back of the head of a Japanese lady, and when she bent over slightly to adjust the bag over her shoulder I could see the base of the geyser bubbling as it prepared to erupt. The anticipation was everything, and the power built up slowly – the crater spitting and frothing violently – until finally a seven metre plume of steam erupted from the ground, at which point all three hundred of us had a pretty good view.

Once in full flow, the geyser can keep going for an hour. Figuring there wasn't much more to see, we were first back into the car park and back down the hill to Wai-o-tapu proper. It took a couple of hours to stroll around the 'geothermal wonderland', which presents examples of the different ways the pressure inside the Earth can force its way out to the surface, including a series of huge craters which pockmark the park at random, where acids have eaten away the ground underneath; mud pools and mud volcanoes, which bubbled and spat with varying degrees of violence; and a series of mutli-coloured acid lakes. The latter were the most picturesque, and best of the lot were the Devil's Paint Pots and the Champagne Lake, two huge adjoining lakes streaked in different colours which change everyday according to the minerals which have welled up inside them (for example, sulphur makes yellow, iron makes reddy brown, orange is antimony and purple is manganese). Today the Champagne Lake was vivid orange at the fringes, turning into deep blue abruptly after that, while the Paint Pots were daubed in blots of green and yellow.

We also saw the Devil's Bath, which is a vivid pond which glows a surreal and even shade of Gatorade green. I've noticed it's all Devil's This and Devil's That in places like this, and I wish the early explorers could be more imaginative when naming the things they discover. At Wai-o-tapu we saw the Devil's Paint Pots, the Devil's Bath and the Devil's Home, and we've previously seen two Devil's Staircases, a Devil's Pond and Devil's Bridge. Could we not have, say, Mabel's Paint Pots, Geraldine's Bath and Leslie's Staircase? Hopefully the New Zealand Department of Conservation is reading.

We drove further north to Te Puia, which is technically a Maori culture centre although we skipped all the anthropological nonsense to eat cake and admire more geothermal stuff. This included a geyser which is active 80% of the time and also more powerful than the Knox Geyser, and while this sounds more impressive it did mean the plume was barely visible though the thick steam and mist. We also saw some very neat mud pools which grew in concentric circles, and the usual range of bubbling cauldrons and steaming pits. We also tried to see a kiwi bird, which was housed in its own special aviary, but I guess he was out doing its laundry as it was a very small aviary and we still couldn't see him.

It had been drizzling all day, so we drove home to Taupo to eat pizza and make a sterling effort finish off all of the cider we'd bought earlier in the week.

Day 54, in which the ducks eat our breakfast

Today was another quiet day, which we spent pottering around the lake and then popping into town for lunch. We ended up in a Japanese café – eating things like sushi, teriyaki and tempura – and were delighted to find it was all delicious, although Paul couldn't quite bring himself to touch the boiled white rice. It seems our appetites may in time tolerate westernised Japanese food again (but certainly not Japanese western food).

We also fed the ducks some breakfast. They went totally nuts for raisin bran and trotted up onto our lawn to introduce themselves properly. Although they appear to be a rather dull brown colour, when they lift a wing you can see a jaunty row of bright green feathers. Paul later tried to befriend three black swans who live among the rocks to the right of the bach, but aborted on the suspicion that the larger of the birds wanted to test the rumour that a swan can break a human arm with its beak.

I also had to email work today to confirm that I'll be returning in one month's time. Boo.

Day 53, St Valentine's Day, in which we follow in Frodo's footsteps up Mount Doom

We were due to get up at 5:30am today to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, however neither of us could get to sleep so we got up at 2:30am instead and watched Swimfan (on the one channel in New Zealand that still operates at that hour) before having just a big enough nap to be irritable once the alarm finally went off. A bus collected us from central Turangi and – after a strange briefing from the driver, in which she explained this was really quite an ugly place to walk – dropped us off at the start of what is widely regarded as the best one day trek in the country. About two hundred other people also appeared to be doing the walk, but once we got going we all distributed out nicely along the path. We saw plenty of people on route, but it wasn't so packed you could start a conga.

The walk started at the foot of Mount Ngauruhoe, a huge conical volcano which is now better known as 'Mount Doom', thanks in part to Sir Peter Jackson using it in his popular series of hobbit movies but mostly because no one really knows how to pronounce 'Ngauruhoe'. The sun was still low in the sky, so this part of the walk was relatively cool and we enjoyed an easy hour's hike through the volcanic wastelands, crossing old lava flows and following a soda stream up to the base of the volcano.

The track then turned abruptly uphill, up what the guidebook referred to as the Devil's Staircase. I'd expected this to be a natural formation – say, layers of limestone lying in fractured strata to form a natural flight of steps up the mountain – but it transpired to be just a series of man-made pine staircases which looked no more than ten years old, winding their way up the side of the mountain. This was all a bit blah, although as we climbed higher we were rewarded with stunning views out across the North Island, including lakes, forests, meadows and a very distant snow-topped mountain.

There was an option here to ascend Mount Doom itself, however that track is not really defined and our guidebook contained a series of warnings to the effect that climbing the volcano is an act of suicide (and requires long trousers) so we dismissed the idea. There was also a sign which advised on the correct course of action should Mount Doom start to erupt. Most of these involved advice along the lines of “Try not to let any flying rocks hit your head” and “Try not to get engulfed in a sudden lava flow”, so I suspect there wasn't really anything we would be able to do if it did explode.

We crossed a ridge, descended into the South Crater and then crossed the flattest terrain I have ever walked across, which was so flat it confused my brain into thinking we were walking on water. The crater appears to have been filled with clay and then perfectly levelled off, and while this might sound quite dull we did get some superb views of Mount Doom, which was far more colourful from this angle and appears to be topped in rich deep red.

Also looming on the horizon was the Red Crater ridge, which I particularly feared as the guidebook warned that the track there follows a narrow ridge with long drops on either side. We first climbed up to the top of the ridge where we found a stunningly desolate wasteland on the other side, with volcanic rock formations even more twisted and bizarre than during our initial walk from the drop-off point. We then followed the track along the top of the ridge, which was quite very scary and whenever I slipped and lost my footing I figured I was a goner. When we got to the top at 1886 metres – and enjoyed our sandwiches overlooking stunning views of the way we had come – I was justifiably very proud of myself.

Alas, it transpired that wasn't actually not the scary part of the Red Crater Ridge. After a cheese and jam sandwich we followed the route towards the Red Crater proper and I was confused to see that the path suddenly stopped. As we reached that point I saw why: a couple of feet in front of me was a sheer drop down into the heart of the active volcanic crater, with the pathway skirting left along the lip of the crater (I was petrified, but I postponed hysteria sufficiently to observe that the crater was an unexpected and breathtaking shade of red, cross-cut with bands of black volcanic rock). The guidebook here had a wonderful piece of advice: “Please do not walk too close to the edge of the crater because if you fall in you will not come out.” If this were the UK, they would have ten foot high fences around this sort of hazard – but then, if they did that it wouldn't be worth coming to see.

I focussed my mind on survival and marched up the ridge and back down the other side. The path on the far side was about two metres wide with sheer drops on either side, but worse was made from a sort of volcanic sand and scree which slipped from under you as you walked. Everyone slipped and slid down the ridge, but surprisingly no one toppled off into the volcano and died. Looking back you could see into the rich red heart of the crater, while down below sat the Emerald Lakes, a group of fabulous blue ponds. The eggy stench of sulphur was thick in the air so we assume the ponds were filled with sulphuric acid, although the guidebook only offered the hint “No swimming!”

We trekked down through the flats of the vast Central Crater and then climbed up the ridge on the far side. We were supposed to be admiring the Blue Lake (“No swimming!”) here, but in the opposite direction was the much more beautiful view of the vivid red crater snuggling up against the red-tipped Mount Doom.

It was all down hill from here, in every sense. We endured a long and tedious trek down through the grassy hills of the Rotopaunga Valley into a winding pathway through bland forests which seemed to last absolutely forever (but was in fact only two and a half hours). Despite this, seeing Mount Doom and the Red Crater so close up is definitely yet another Top Ten highlight of the holiday, our pleasure only marginally diluted by the return journey. This was the closest we've been to the heart of an active volcano and we were surprised by how beautiful something so desolate and destructive could be. Although this was called the Tongariro Crossing we didn't actually notice Mount Tongariro at all. It wasn't any particular colour and didn't belch smoke or threaten to erupt, and so went pretty much unnoticed.

We had planned a big dinner with champagne when we got home, but were too tired and dehydrated so we only had toast and champagne, and then bed.