Taranaki volcano and Whanganui river

From Wellington we headed west to Egmont National Park. On the way we passed through many cities and towns and noticed the north island of NZ is much more populated than the south island and instead of sheep there were cows everywhere. When we arrived to the national park it was quite chilly, we couldn't even see the volcano Taranaki (the national park surrounds that mountain), but the people in the visitors center promised us the next day will be better. We spent the night in the visitors center at the foot of the mountain and it did clear up by the time we woke up the next day.














After we ate breakfast and made sandwiches for lunch, we started walking in an old 4WD road that led to the base of the route to the summit of mount Taranaki (2518 meters high).










































The volcano is inactive, so there's no problem climbing it independently.
After one hour and a short chat with a nice British couple, we started the hard part, and it was hard... It's not the steep climbing (we got used to it in NZ) but walking almost all the way with the feeling you might slide down if you put your feet in the wrong spot. Half of the way we had to walk on a steep exposed section with marble stones - you climb two steps up and slide one step down. We had some experience with such things, but every time it ended after couple of minutes. This track had 1.5 hours of this... At that point Sarit started to panic and by the time we reached the last section, which was a combination of the last part with big rocks, Sarit had tears in her eyes.




























Slowly slowly we climbed up until we reached the crater at the summit.
The crater was covered with snow and strong winds were blowing, which made staying at the top of the mountain not very pleasant, But still we managed to enjoy the views that surrounded us, including the view of the 3 volcanoes of the Tongariro national park.










































2 sandwiches and we started the way down. We found out that going down was harder than going up. This time Roi had tears in his eyes :)

From Taranaki we continued to Taumarunui , our base town for the "Whanganui Journey" - a canoe trip downstream the Whanganui river. We chose to do only 2 days out of the 5 days that takes to do the whole trip. We hired Canadian canoe, paddles and waterproof barrels to put our equipment in.




























We tied everything to the canoe and started paddling. Roi was the pilot at the rear of the canoe and Sarit was the "engine" at the front. The entire journey was accompanied with rhythm shouts of Roi ("Faster!", "Slower!", "To the right!", etc).
The first day was a bit rough with level 2 rapids along the river. We used the tips the guys from the canoe hire company gave us and managed to cross the rapids without tipping over. 5.5 hours of paddling and we arrived to the camping ground. Our arms were stiff by then, it was the first time we paddled in canoe like this.
On the second day the river was much easier with only small rapids, Sarit even managed to take few photos.










































4 hours of paddles and we arrived to the pickup point and ended our journey.
That evening we drove to a little town called National Park, the next morning we started a trek called "The Tongariro Northern Circuit" but that's for another post.