I had heard so many good things about the Tongariro Crossing - a one day hike (or 'tramp' as they call it here) through the eponymous national park - that I waited around until the weather cleared so that I could do it. I'd heard some not-so-good things too, about how tough it was, but it didn't really register at the time. It was only when I was panting like a steam train going up the aptly named "Devil's Staircase," that all those words came back to haunt me. It was actually a fantastic walk that took around seven hours and crossed terrain ranging from bush to volcanic rocks to snow fields to thermal areas to rainforest, and went from 1150 metres up to 1886 m and back down to 700 m. This might not sound like much, but when you're struggling up an almost vertical slope covered entirely in ice crystals, hoping that your crampons will hold, it is impossibly steep.

Tongariro is where Mordor was filmed in Lord of the Rings, and the mountain that we passed, Ngauruhoe, is Mount Doom. I began to wish I had Sam Gamgee with me to hand me hobbit biscuits and remind me of strawberries and other nice things as my unfit legs wobbled along the ledges. The views were stunning - of craters and lakes - and I appreciated it all the more knowing that we were so fortunate to have such a beautiful day. We ate lunch near a thermal area where the ground was hot to the touch, and wound our way down through grassland to a hut to rest and fill up with manky water. It was an amazing hike and well worth the aching legs.