Only the fourth national park established in the world, Tongariro sits at the south-west terminus of a 1600-mile-long string of volcanoes on the boundary of the Indo-Australian and Pacific plates, on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. The boundary of the park encircles the active Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro volcanoes, with two smaller dormant cones outside the park just to the north and huge Mt Taranaki in view 130 miles to the southwest.