Snow on the North Island

Ruapehu takes its name from the active volcano Mount Ruapehu (rua meaning 'pit' and pehu 'to explode') and is the highest mountain in the North Island - Ruapehu is New Zealand's most famous volcano and it is considered to be sacred by the local Maori. The only glacier in the North Island is found here and the volcano's crater lake is one of only three in the world which is surrounded by snow and ice. The volcano is actually still active and the tourist guide books assure us that there are very sophisticated risk management procedures and early warning systems in place - it looked fairly safe last weekend so we took a closer look!

We were returning to Hamilton from Wanganui which is on the West coast of New Zealand and decided to take a slight detour so that we could see this spectacular 'mountain'. The Bayview Chateau which you can see in the pictures, is a four star establishment and we would imagine would run to a few hundred dollars per person per night - a bit beyond our means at the

moment!