Right, I know it's been a while... Anyhow, Tongariro - it seems like we got one of the best days possible to be there; apparently they'd had about five weeks of rain and gale force winds... By the time we got there (having left rainy grey Taupo at 6am) and had driven up through the cloud layer, it was perfect blue sky

I didn't fancy doing the Tongariro crossing myself, especially as the first 1-2 hours is the hardest (all uphill on volcanic rock - nice...), so four of us decided to take Ricky's advice and do one of the shorter walks. He dropped us at the top of the walk so we could take our time ambling back down to the visitor centre. It was called the Silica Rapids walk after the yellow-stained rocks in the mini-rapids about halfway round. It was a very pleasant walk, with some fantastic views of Mount Doom (I have at least half a dozen photos of the same mountain!).
After the walk Ricky drove us all to the hostel at National Park - it's actually a lodge style hotel with some dorm rooms, so pretty swish for backpacking standards! The pub had run out of the highly recommended burgers (apparently the ATM machine also occasionally runs out of cash, the place is so remote), so we ended up having fish and chips instead. Such a hard life...

Started off quite a nice day the next day, but it got greyer and more drizzly as we drove down to Wellington. By the time we got there it was living up to its 'windy Welly' name - horizontal rain and massive gusts - so we spent the afternoon in Te Papa, the national museum. A pretty good museum, although I didn't get round all of it - after a while you get museum-ed out.

Had a night down in the hostel bar with people off the bus - a lot of them were going on to the South Island the next day, whereas I was staying in Wellington for a couple of days. It's strange, we'd only been travelling together for a week or so, but it felt like so much longer. Anyway, the less said about the better - what happens on tour stays on tour!!!