Taranaki beauty

We were arrived in Welly at 10pm with no plans. Thankfully our mate was able to host us for a night even if she already was sleeping in her flat's lounge. It is a nice and weird feeling to be back here! We spend a day doing groceries, paperwork and some planning because we don't know nothing about the North Island and have two weeks ahead of us. After enjoying some city life - understand restaurants and fancy craftbeer bars - we stayed at the creepiest backpacker hostel on Earth. The morning after we headed to the trainstation because we figured it was the cheapest, easiest and more enjoyable way to get out of Wellington to get to a nice hitch-hiking spot.
A couple of hours, three rides, some free sight-seeing and honey ice-cream offered by a Maori later, we were dropped at the foothills of Mt Taranaki. Way too easy! After a short and cold camping night in the bush, we hitched early in the morning to the visitor center and the trailheads. We started walking to the first hut at 7.45am and reached it at 9, just on time for breakfast and a little nap on the sunnydeck with the scenic view. Imagine a perfectly conic volcano surrounded only by flat lands with the Tasman Sea on one side and the Tongariro on the other... The weather was awesome and we decided to climb the Taranaki that day. After a 4h steady climb in the rocks, we reached the summit. Ho my g**, holly crap, f**** hell it was just AWESOMELY AMAZING! Definitely one of those undescreptible views, summit above two seas, one made of cloud, the other of water.
We didn't really want to go down but couldn't stay neither. We will be back! The descent was a good run and we quickly got back to the hut that was now totally overbooked and noisy with kids and a large group of Russians. We spent the next day chilling there, enjoying the scnery and the deck.
After a good night of sleep, we hiked back to the visitor center. As soon as we got to the carpark, we saw a car leaving, showed the thumbs up and off we went for another crazy 9 cars ride towards the Tongariro! We got to National Park - yes, that is a tiny town name - at 6pm, booked a campsite where we were the only brave ones actually camping. Winter was  slowly coming on us and the night temps were definitely below freezing. But we realized that we picked the very only campsite with a free spapool. Perfect to recover from a long hitching day and be ready to explore the Tongariro National Park.