Sure Travel Journey Vol 4.3 Winter 2018 | Page 32

© KEAL
“You’re a bunch of jolly good
buggers!” Terry bellows.
“Especially for this time of the
morning!”
It’s 5:30 a.m. and we’re being shuttled to
the start of New Zealand’s most famous
day trek, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
The bus is packed with hikers from across
the globe wearing enough softshell and
duck down to smother a small army, but
our burly driver Terry is rocking shorts
and a thin ponytail scraped together
from the sides of his head, impervious to
the temperature gauge that reads four
degrees Celsius outside.
After a quick safety brief, he points
out the window to the silhouette of the
towering volcanic ridge we will soon be
tackling.
“Just look at this day, not a cloud in the
sky,” Terry booms jovially. “It’s a bloody
beauty! Go and get it!”
The crossing is famous for its volatile
weather, but we seem to have struck it
lucky. Now all I need is for my shoes to
stay in one piece.
The night before I’d noticed that my
long-suffering walking shoes had become
partially detached from their soles, leaving
me no choice but to superglue them back
together. In the glow of the dim head
torch it looked like a fairly sturdy job. On
closer inspection, however, they now look
like sticky pieces of biltong with laces that
might fall apart at any moment. The fact
that most of our fellow hikers look ready
to take on Everest does little to assuage
the anxiety over my footwear. But then
I spot a Kiwi granny in a pair of tracksuit
pants and a woollen sweater steaming up
the trail in her takkies, and we quickly fall
in line behind her.
***
The Tongariro National Park sits roughly in
the centre of New Zealand’s North Island,
making it the perfect halfway point on
our self-drive odyssey. After landing in
Auckland, my partner Hannah and I had
hired a campervan and hit the road, first
exploring the rugged west coast beaches
around the Waikato region, then cutting
inland where we camped amongst thick
indigenous forest. Now we were about to
ascend Mount Doom.
Technically, the famous Lord of the
32 // MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE
Below: Looking back towards the Red Crater and ‘Mount Doom’, Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
© BENDIX