Mount Doom fly-over!

Roll up, roll up here is the long awaited (Joe’s finally got a go on the computer) Mount Doom fly-over blog.

WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS

Active volcanoes
Famous movie locations
Intrepid flying in small aircraft
And
Three small children

THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION SHOULD CEASE READING NOW!

Once we had dispatched mummy to see her mountain at the ungodly hour of 7.00am the rest of our intrepid crew packed up the camper and headed off to the small airstrip at Whakapapa (pronounced far-ka –papa). We had been told to arrive first thing but on arrival we were informed that the first flight available to us was not for a couple of hours. No problem – we did what anyone else would do in this situation, we headed on up the road to an abandoned restaurant, sat on its deserted porch, ate biscuits and apple juice whilst playing cards under the shadow of MOUNT DOOM.

Finally the time to get the flight arrived, Rhys had a quick briefing as the whole fly-over idea had come from his birthday wish to see Lord of the Rings locations, preferable by helicopter. (Unfortunately the helicopter was unavailable that day as it had been chartered by a NZ government minister to go to the Mt. Ngauruhoe crater lake and check the dangerously high water levels ahead of the impending lahar (devastating flooding), which we were told was due around about March (on Tuesday at 10.31 to be precise!). Anyway we digress, Rhys had a briefing, because the last time we had arrived at a small airstrip with plans for a spectacular flight on which he had been booked for some months, he announced 2 minutes before take-off that he didn’t want to go and nobody had asked him if he’d wanted to in the first place. So he was briefed that this had all been arranged at his request and there was no opt out clause. (At which point he did consider staying in the van and listening to Harry Potter on CD, I believe that the look on my face at this point persuaded him that this was not the correct thing to say right now!!)

So, with us all in accord that this was going to be a superb experience we boarded our little 4 seater light aircraft, four seats that included the pilots that is. Rhys got pride of place in the co-pilots seat and Rowan and I sat in the back with Jenna on my lap.

To be serious for a minute (yeah right) Mt Tongariro national park is a stunning place and the volcanoes are best viewed from the air (without any of that nasty walking business). The kids whooped and shouted ‘Look, look over there’, ‘Dad, dad can you see the lakes’ and that sort of thing. The pilot talked them through the flight on their headsets, (which Jenna beautifully descriped as looking like Mummy’s boobies) and we swooped and looped first around Mt Ruapehu and then across snowy Mt Ngauruhoe. The lakes were amazing blues and greens and steam and lava rose majestically from Mt Ruapehu’s crater.