Another beautiful Hike in Ateora - The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, New Zealand

Hi everyone, Kia Ora, Xin chào,

It has been 3weeks I haven't put on my blogging hat. I haven't lost my steemiting motivation yet. It is just I don't know what to write and what to share with our communities. I want to bring values to it so I struggle when I couldn't find anything and unable to write probably.

Also, I was under my own pressure to be good as other steemers. I started questioning myself about why other steemers can blog everyday with good and interesting content but I couldn't. I am not as good as them.

I know and understand that I shouldn't compare myself with others. It is impossible to do so and I only should compare me to myself. But I still did. I thought I am able to equip myself with a strong emotional fitness base with all the knowledge and skills that I read and learn but clearly I am not. Thankfully, I had a chat with my dear friend @trangbaby and with her encouragement, I feel full of energy again.

Today I chose a phenomenal mountain hiking track in New Zealand to blog about. This is the first one-day hiking I did in New Zealand after many months working in a blueberry farm. It reminds me about hard work pay off and everything will come sonner or later. Ok, are you well-prepared for this hike? Let's go.

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is located in the Tongariro National Park - a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are several volcanoes in the area like Mt Ruapehu that I introduced to you in my post Ride the volcano, do you dare? However, the most impressive one is Mount Ngāuruhoe, which stands out for its perfectly shaped (and still active!) stratovolcano with a height of 2291 meters.

The hiking track my friends and I followed is the 19.4 km of alpine terrain and it took us around 8 hours to complete. For me, The best part of this hike is that it's a constant changing of scenes! I walked past several craters, and being amazed with ancient lava flows and stark volcanic landscapes, steeming crater lakes and Alpine fields!

We started the track when it was still dark with the easiest part of the whole hike. After around 4.5 km we reach to the Devil's Staircase where we had to climb a lot of stairs. I was so tired as I hadn't really prepared for this hike. I thought I worked outdoor in a farm so it would be fine to hike a mountain but I was completely wrong. I should had been improving my physical strengh before doing it.

_{The hike began with a beautiful sunrise}

Once we reach to the top of the stairs, we could see right in front of Mount Ngāuruhoe. This hiking part was really enjoyable for me as it was not too difficult. Also, I had never been to a volcanic area before so it appears completely alien to me.

The track to the peak of the red crater and the 3 beautiful emerald lakes was the most dangerous and difficutl part of this hike. I consider it was the same difficulty level with the one I experience in my hiking trip in Mt Taranaki. The rolling peddle with strong wind made it so hard to move around. I remember when we were on top of the red crater, I had to sit down so the wind wouldn't blow me away.

Once we got down to the lakes, It was beautiful and calm so we decided to have our lunch there. After that we continued our way to the big blue lake and then rushed to go as we didn't have much time left and one of my friends felt unwell so I didn't take photos on the last part.

_{view over the blue lake}

A big thank you for stopping by and read my post today. This is a spectacular hiking track that I will be back one day to do it again. Hopefully I can share with you more about it. Until next time my dear steemit friends...

P/S: some of the photos in this post were taken by my friend Yelen and Sabrina. Thank you my girls for taking photos for me.

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