It's very wintery

We continue directly into the next national park, with several volcanoes known from Lord of the Rings, such as Mount Doom and Mordor. Numerous Maori legends revolve around the volcanoes and the most recently visited Mt Taranaki.

One of them is this:

Mt Ruapehu was married to Mt Taranaki. One day when he was hunting, Mt Ruapehu was courted by Mt Tongario. Mt Taranaki surprises them both and there is a fight, which he unfortunately loses. So he migrates to the west coast and leaves behind the Whanganui River with his tears. Behind the clouds that can almost always be seen around the Taranaki peak, it hides its sadness.

We also want to go hiking here, but not the big, well-known Tongario Crossing Tour. You have to book it in advance now, it's so overcrowded and touristy. First we spend two planned rainy days at the campsite. They wouldn't actually be so bad if it weren't so cold. 8 degrees during the day and up to 3 degrees at night. We have what feels like everything we own and are making endless fresh hot water bottles. Sometimes we even preheat Willi with the gas stove so that we don't freeze to death when we fall asleep. We cover Willi's roof with the sleeping mats and towels because we are standing under a lot of trees and the raindrops hit the roof incredibly loudly. You can even hear that through the oropax. One day there was a thunderstorm and a lot of hail came down so that the whole meadow was white.

It stopped raining at night and we woke up to a clear blue sky. We go for a short jog through the national park and have an amazing view. Because of the heavy rain of the last few days, we don't trust the routes and rivers and so we forego one of the longer hikes.