4.) Photovan does Ruapehu

Sept 2008

Last weekend I took my photovan to Ruapehu with the idea of spending some time walking in the snow . I had thought of naming my van 'rattle and squeak' but after seeing how much oil it uses in relation to petrol I think "two stroke" is more appropriate, though it uses twice as much fuel as my pulsar it pays for itself in other ways , it cost me $15 a night to stay in the campsite compared to the $200 a night the motel would have cost .[ for the first time ever all pictures were taken in manual mode ]



The campsite was next to "The Chateaux'



There are quite a few pictures so I'll add one after each reply to speed things up a bit .
[all images here http://s107.photobucket.com/albums/m...downs/skitour/
First I made contact with a company that arranges transport for the Tongariro crossing http://www.tongarirocrossing.org.nz/...FRGiiQodTk7xeA , 70000 people walk it each year but not in the snow which is my next goal . The company made plans to leave 7am sunday morning and I drove to "Turangi" early . The sun was just coming up .



After I arrived they phoned me to tell me not to bother driving over because the weather ''had advanced by 12 hours'' and the afternoon 'might' not be good weather - they have to take full responsibility for anything that happens so they were being safe . I decided to do something a bit more dangerous , I took my $1 skis up the mountain but first went for a walk to warm up ...



"mount doom" in the distance ....

There was cloud over the rest of the area





and the chair lifts fired up ...



So I went and got my skis and spent my third day in as many years skiing - the slope seemed steeper than last year in the morning but by the afternoon it was a bit lame but I decided to save the steeper slopes for another time . Anyway later on someone told me the antique skis I was using probably wouldn't release properly if I crashed

As my story progresses I'll add pictures from the thermal park ...



along whith the various growths on the trees and rocks



some slow exposures of the golden rapids ...



time exposures of the traffic at night



I want to edit this one , give the blades some rotation blur ...



add a few from the cave ...



my personal favourite the bubbling mud ...



and share the story of the Tawa lakes walk past the falls .....







I enjoyed it when the sun was going down ....





A lot of snow has meleted but the ski fields are still open now in spring due to the amount of snow left - it's pretty hard skiing on what's left [ well actually it's pretty hard for me to ski on anything !] , when I fell the second time on the same place it was almost like sliding on gravel .





this was a wide angle shot next to lake Taupo ....





There's no shortage of things to photograph , whatever direction you go in . It was my first stop at this particualr thermal park ...



which included a cave for good measure this time .



the water was really warm but there was a "no swimming" sign .









On Monday I decided to walk to the Tama lakes , I had walked past the turnoff before but never visited them .

First comes a walk through the trees which all have stuff growing on them ...



The marshlands are protected by boardwalks ....



I suppose this could be called a sign when you get to the lower Tama lake



The lower lake ...



the 'wind shelter ' at the upper lake which is another 20 minutes up the hill ...



"X" marks the spot , you are here !







There is a lot of colour even amongst the rocks .







and almost every tree has something else growing on it ....

The one called "old man's beard" is actually a bit of a pest and sometimes covers the entire tree ....

Coming back from the lakes I stopped off at the Taranaki falls ...



and had a look from the top as well .....