Turangi, New Zealand - Polarsteps

Tongariro Alpine Crossing - Lake Taupo New Zealand, travel day 139 Waking up early to miss a sunrise, that's something really hurts to me, but we had to get prepared for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This is a 19km in about 8h walk, and of the easiest Great Walks in New Zealand, it's so popular that during summer it's estimated between 2000 and 3000 people do it in a day, I certainly wouldn't like to do it that day. Anyway we waited for everyone else to get ready as we had no gear to hire, it comes to my surprise people come to do this walk without proper clothes or shoes but it's good the guides check on you and let you hire everything, from thermal layers to outside raincoats or pants. Once everyone got their stuff sorted out we headed to the volcanoes. That was about an hour later than sunrise. We started the walk in different groups, we were about 30 people and 3 guides, the first group we join was slow for our taste, so rapidly we change and went a bit faster, but still slow. The views are incredible seen all the snow whiteout and the volcanic lava from hundreds of years back it's really amazing. We were stopping too often and I was already thinking we could have done this by ourselves. Continuing forward until the south crater where we are explained how to use crampons and ice axe, the second tool totally for the show. Then we started going up to Tongariro, our highest point about 1900m and there was enough snow, soon later turned out into ice patches but doable without crampons as other people was carefully going up and down. At the highest point we stopped for the best view of Mt Ngauruhoe and the Emerald lakes, we had low clouds passing by the whole day so we had to wait some times to get the light. After that we went down to a small flat area kind of shelter from the winds and had lunch, we meet a couple of nice people on the way After lunch was the worst part for me. We were going too slow, causing traffic joto other trekkers our guide didn't really push the group, but later she mentioned that we were later than usual, anyway as fast as I could I started going down by myself cause I was falling asleep, and reached the end a bit earlier. In the end I totally think this tour is overpriced for what you get, weather conditions were good but cloudy, I understand some people would need a guide in this case but for us it felt like the information point just wanted us to go on tour. The walk is breathtaking and everyone should do it, it's relatively easy but long, and going through volcanoes it's something you don't get to do everyday, and the end of the walk you can see some fumaroles from more recent erupted volcanoes. Worth to do the 19km. Once we arrived back at the shop we left as soon as possible and drove for about an hour, tired both we went to bed without much for dinner.