2 days National Park - Mordor for any hobbits

Trip Start Jan 19, 2006

Trip End Sep 07, 2006

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Flag of New Zealand Tongariro National Park, New Zealand
Thursday, February 16, 2006

The National Park was..... intimidating! A proper YHA (including indoor climbing wall)in a proper middle of nowhere setiing! The view of Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom in The LordOTRings's) was beautiful and bleak and the place was filled with seemingly hardcore outdoor pursuitists and it took a walk to the lovely Station Cafe for an enormous latte before I settled and stopped feeling under pressure to climb something big!

The cafe was a quite remarkable place - a lovely cafe by day and a fab restaurant at night. I persuaded Phil we should go there for dinner and he was very glad I did, not just for the food but also because he thought the sisters who ran it were "hot"!

Whilst in the National Park we we did a walk to the Taranaki Falls. It started over moor and reminded us of Scotland, with one slight exception, the bloody great big mountain on our right hand side!

The falls themselves were gorgeous although not very full. I imagine in winter they must be impressive stuff. Once we'd completed the walk I felt much better about staying in such a healthy location!

We probably didn't do all that we could in the park but it was actually nice to have a bit of what Phil calls "bum time", the first time we had the chance to really.

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