Kiwi Tracks (16 page)

I totter to the nearest backpackers lodge. Walking into the lounge, I recognise someone – the Englishman walking the length
of New Zealand. He is deeply tanned and sits by himself on a sofa. He does not talk to anyone; I say hello but he barely responds. I wonder if he is catatonic because of this walk, or if he is equally reticent at home.

That evening I climb into an upper bunk bed. My Italian bunkmate below sleeps fitfully, and with every toss and turn of his considerable mass, he shakes the rickety bunk. Each time I panic, believing it is an earthquake; given my reading about the geology of the region, the misapprehension is forgivable. I ease myself to sleep by rationalising that if there were an earthquake and the bunk collapsed, at least I would have a soft landing.

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Tongariro National Park is comprised of three volcanoes, including Mount Ruapehu, the highest mountain in the North Island. All three volcanoes have erupted recently. Lava flowed from Mount Ngauruhoe in the Christmas Eve eruption, which destroyed the Tangiwai Train Bridge in 1954. That was followed more recently by large ash eruptions in 1974 and 1975.

The sky is blue and the volcano summits unclouded. I climb into the backpackers shuttle bus and we drive to the parking lot just before Mangatepopo Hut. Here hundreds of trampers set off, most of them walking the Tongariro Crossing, enticed by DOC marketing. While the Milford Track is advertised as the finest walk in the world, the Tongariro Crossing is billed as the finest one-day walk in New Zealand.

There is a never-ending line of trampers on the track, easily visible in their multi-coloured jackets. From the saddle, before it descends to Blue Lake, I divert to scramble up the slopes of Ngauruhoe. Loose cinders, black, red and brown, give way under my feet; with each step up I seem to slide half a step back. Looking up at the summit of this perfect, cone-shaped volcano, I see what could be mistaken for mist on a normal day, but with this
clear cobalt-blue sky, it can only be a fumarole. It is like a child’s concept of a volcano, a rounded-off pyramid with ‘smoke’ coming out of the apex.

From the summit of Ngauruhoe, I see to the north a moonscape of reddish-brown craters, deserts and snowfields, interspersed with brilliant emerald and turquoise crater lakes. To the south-east is the desolate Rangipo Desert, its shifting black sands flanked by the ten thousand-year-old Upper and Lower Tama lakes. Past the large, deep-blue lakes are the snow-covered, glacial slopes of Mount Ruapehu, which last erupted only some months ago. Far to the west, 155 kilometres away, I can clearly see the volcano Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont. While taking in this vista, I absent-mindedly step towards the steaming vent, into a natural volcanic sauna. The hidden force which shaped this cone of earth still lurks dormant, waiting to explode. Ngauruhoe is said to erupt every nine years, sending columns of ash several kilometres in the air. There should have been an eruption in 1984, and another in 1993, but neither occurred, so we are overdue for one now. Astride the leaking anus of this potentially active volcano, it occurs to me in mid-split that just the slightest puff of flatulence from Mount Ngauruhoe, at this particular point in time, would blow me away with little to show as evidence.

I jump off the volcano’s privates and scramble down the crumbling slopes. Still full of energy, I climb both windswept peaks of Tongariro and finally descend to Ketetahi Hut late in the afternoon.

Meri, a young Maori DOC warden, checks my hut pass.

‘You’re the first Maori I’ve really had the chance to talk to,’ I tell her. All official Government signs and documents are in both English and Maori, but in the South Island it seemed a made-up language; I never heard anyone use it. ‘Can you speak Maori?’ I ask.

‘Of course.’ She says a couple of sentences in Maori and then laughs. ‘Did you understand?’

I shake my head.

‘I said’ – she gestures with both hands – ‘that’s where I live.’
One arm is outstretched, indicating with a forefinger; the other arm points in the same direction, but is bent at the elbow, fingers by her head, almost in the stance of someone pulling the string of a bow. She sights her imaginary arrow at a red roof in the valley below. ‘That’s my dad’s place.’

I look down and then over at the Ketetahi Hot Springs. A DOC sign at the hut had spelt out a prohibition regarding the springs, but without an explanation. ‘Why is it forbidden to walk to the ridge overlooking the springs?’ I ask.

‘It’s not up to me to say. The elders of the Ngati Tuwharetoa Trust have to decide.’

‘Ngati Tuwharetoa?’

‘The local tribe.’ She moves all the time, unable to stand still, communicating as much with her hands, eyes, eyebrows and body as in speech.

‘But what’s it all about?’

‘The springs are on private land, which belongs to the Ngati Tuwharetoa.’ When she says ‘private land’ it has the force of ‘PRIVATE LAND!’, as if she had just yelled it rather than said it. I imagine it is an oft-repeated phrase. I accept her explanation, although to be within twenty metres of the springs, to see the steam rising and to hear the fumaroles hissing and boiling, then not be permitted to walk up and look, seems an obvious provocation to trampers. ‘It’s up to DOC to work it out with the elders of the tribe,’ she adds. She is clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

However, when all the day trippers have gone, Meri relents and offers to take me to the springs. We walk down the path to an official green-and-yellow DOC sign, which reads ‘The area beyond this sign known as Ketetahi Hot Springs is private land. Permission has been given by the Ketetahi Trustees for trampers to walk the next 400 metres of track, which passes through their land.’

The sign has been defaced: ‘private’ has been crossed out, and ‘our’ has been scratched into the green paint. The word ‘their’ has also been obliterated, and ‘God’s’ added.

‘The hot springs are created by rainwater seeping through cracks in the earth, heated by hot magma to form steam, which escapes out of the unseen underground holes,’ Meri explains loudly, over the hissing steam.

She stares distractedly at the path below us. A small stone wall has been built across it, more as a symbol than a real barrier. ‘I think I saw some trampers coming up the path. I don’t see them any more. They must be in the pools.’ Her lips are drawn tight and her eyes glint angrily. ‘I better go and check.’

She takes off and returns minutes later, out of breath and perspiring. Several people descend the path out of the park.

‘They were there sure enough,’ she says.

‘What’d you do?’

‘Stood on the ridge and told them to get out. They pretended they couldn’t hear me but they got the message in the end.’

‘What’d you tell them?’

‘Get out of the hot springs, you are on PRIVATE LAND!’

‘I guess you have to chase people out every day.’

‘Yeah. It’s the worst part of the job. Usually I just lock myself in my cabin and ignore everyone. It’s too much aggro arguing with them.’

We continue up to the hut, where Meri explains Maori culture and customs as I sit outside with a Swiss woman and a German couple. She imparts so much information it is impossible to absorb it all. When I start taking notes, it encourages her to talk more.

‘Long before the Maori came here, the gods had the possession of the land.’ She stands up as she talks, as if too restless to sit. She points with a sweeping motion of her hand to the landscape bathed in the late-afternoon light. ‘Several of these mighty gods, including these volcanoes’ – she theatrically indicates the mountains above us – ‘stood in a group for centuries, until one day Taranaki attempted to carry off Phanga, the wife of Tongariro. Up to this time, the mountains had lived together with their families in friendship. But this treacherous behaviour caused conflict, and in the battle that followed, Taranaki went down to Wanganui on
the coast, drawing a furrow behind him, through which the Whanganui River flows.’ She moves in a visual display of the god’s actions. ‘He then fled along the coast until he found rest and peace. In solitary loneliness he now stands under the name of Mount Taranaki.’ Meri says all this with reverence, as if it were gospel.

‘What’s it like going down the Whanganui River?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘Never been down it. Wouldn’t dare, too many spirits there for me. But you should try it.’

‘Why should I try it?’

‘If you want to see Maori customs, you should canoe down the Whanganui River. You’ll see what I’m talking about, a real Maori village.’ She says it with finality.

The sun sets and the sky is emptied of light. In the distance, we see the lights of the town of Taupo sparkling across the other side of Lake Taupo.

Before we go inside for the night, Meri says: ‘That was a primo evening.’

‘Despite the hassles.’

‘Yeah, despite the hassles. It was primo talking to you,’ she repeats, eyes flashing in the dark. ‘It’s the first night working here that I’ve stayed up so late.’ She is still standing and we have been talking for hours.

‘It was radical talking to you, too,’ I reply, picking up her vocabulary.

She turns around, looks at the stars and says: ‘Yeah. Choice.’

‘Crisp,’ I add.

I have to retrace part of my route to continue the Tongariro Northern Circuit to the Emerald Lakes, where I divert down towards Oturere Hut. A wind blows ferociously, threatening to knock me off my feet. Unlike yesterday, impenetrable clouds are so thick they seem to congeal over the mountains, adding a mysterious mood to this barren, desolate landscape. The mist disguises
a wilderness of lava rocks, a bleak moonscape of gravel fields with a dry sand river giving off steam. The sand is hot from the steam, I discover when I kneel down and dig my hand into the riverbed. As I do this I hear a strange cry, almost an electronic sound, and guess it must be a magpie, although it is hidden from view.

I arrive at the spot where tourism began in the Tongariro National Park in 1901, with the building of the original Waihohonu Hut. Early tourists, doing the ‘Grand Tour’, took paddle steamers from the south-west coast of the North Island, up the Whanganui River to Pipiriki, and from there by coach and horseback to Waihohonu Hut. The completion of the main trunk railway in 1908 changed the focus of the volcanic park from the eastern slopes to the west, with National Park as the railway’s stop-off point. Now that railway station has been privatised and trail bikes and ATVs are rented from the former whistle-stop.

The sky clears in the evening; the volcanic summit of Mount Ruapehu, with its steaming, vaporous edges, is gilded gold and backlit by the setting sun. The noise of the rushing river drowns all other sounds.

Sunrise lights up Ruapehu in a cold blue sky. Water left in the outdoor sink of Waihohonu Hut has frozen overnight. Leaving, I come across a warning sign:

Volcanic activity. Lahar (mud and debris) flow paths exist in valleys on this track. If threatened, move to higher ground. Toxic gas can cause respiratory problems around and downwind from the crater. Ash layers can create unstable snow conditions.

In September 1995 Ruapehu blew, fifty years after its last eruption. Thousands of terrified skiers watched as lahars poured down three different routes. Steam, silt from the crater lake in the middle of the volcano, rocks and ash were thrown into the sky and the lake broke its containing walls. Skiing was abandoned, with volcanic activity
continuing over the next month. Then Ruapehu entered a quiet phase until June 1996, when it again blew its top, resulting in massive ash explosions and fire fountains. Volcanic ash covered the snowfields, closing down the two commercial ski fields. Just a friendly little reminder that New Zealand is sitting on a powder keg.