Thursday 1 October

For the second night running it had poured with rain all night but it stopped before we left the camp site.

We drove up towards the ski fields on Ruapehu. At the beginning of the road the vegetation was almost tropical, then it became cold rain forest, then less vegetation and the tree leaves were small. The heather was growing like large bushes up to 6' tall. Finally no trees and then no vegetation. We were in the cloud and there was snow beside the road. There were a lot of people skiing, it was very cold and was snowing. We felt very under dressed. We had been asked to park very close to the edge of the drop!