Started our travels on land in earnest today, driving down to Tongariro National Park, where they filmed Lord of the Rings. About half way to our ferry point in Wellington.

There was a large volcanic eruption here in 1953 when crater lake rose, flooded the railway line and killed 58 people in the express train. A more recent major eruption was in 1995/6 and a minor one in 2005. We found a lovely camp site up in the park, arriving at about 3.30 p.m. This gave us time to do a 2.5 hour spectacular walk up to silica rapids and back. The route takes in lots of rapids, lots of board walks, a wonderful waterfall and some amazing white coloured rocks in the rapids where aluminium silicate precipitates out of the water. Unfortunately, after we got to the top it the clouds came down and it started to rain. We were lucky though, because when we hit the last section of the walk, back along a road, and the rain really started to come down, we were given a lift by a young German couple back to our campsite.

Tomorrow we are off to Wellington as we take the ferry to South Island first thing on Thursday.