Tongariro Alpine Crossing

The crossing is a 20km hike up and over 2 of New Zealands volcanoes. It's one way, and as I wanted to continue straight from when I finished I had to carry my whole pack which as I got a bit excited at Pak n Save (NZ's costco) my bag was weighing around 20kg so uphill was fun! I managed to get a bed in a hut at the beginning of the hike. I met some really nice Germans in the hut and did most of the hike with them. We hiked up to red crater, which is a volcanic crater 1880m above sea level. The route up to the crater was quite cloudy in the morning. We walked through the cloud until we managed to get above it. Which if anything made the view even more spectacular.

Red crater is incredible. And the view even better. There were gusts of 75km/h but it wasn't actually too bad.
It was amazing, the landscape so alien it felt like I could have been on mars. 

There were these lakes called the Emerald Lakes. Which look amazing but smelt like rotten eggs. Another hilight of my trip without a doubt.

When I finished, I got a hitch from a guy who runs a shuttle bus company. He said that I was lucky, as normally the route is heaving but the wind had put alot of people off doing it. He drove me to Taupo where I found a bed. I was quite tired so it was nice to not be camping.