After all the excitement of the last few days, thought I deserved a break! So, today was spent trying to sort out a hire car to get to some places which I fancied, but couldn't get to.
Phoned around and ended up getting a little Toyota Starlet delivered, ahhhh. It's a nice little car, but only four gears. Strange though, when one drives around sharp bends at an average speed, the tyres squeal. I spend most of the time pretending I'm in an American Cop movie. Now, if only I had a flashing light to attach to the top of the car�.
Whilst waiting for the car to arrive, I went for a mountain bike ride with Raj around the nearby airfield. This brought in to focus my lack of fitness as I huffed and puffed my way around, clanging the gears on the way. It must be great though to have so much accessible countryside on your doorstep� and the energy to make the most of it!
Now I had the car, it meant that I could travel a bit further afield and one of the places that I wanted to go before was to visit the Coromandel Peninsula. This is a really beautiful area of New Zealand, sticking out of the North coast of the North Island.
It meant a crack of dawn start to my expedition so it was with bleary eyes and a packed lunch (with flask of course) that I drove North out of Tokoroa. It was still dark so I had an amazing view of the sun rising over the hills, burning the mist out of the valleys, absolutely beautiful. I was heading for Thames on the East coast of the peninsula to find out some information about the tides for one of my destinations.
It took a couple of hours to get to Thames and I stopped there for a brew before doubling back to the Karangahake Gorge. The road winds it's way through a steep valley alongside a gorgeous river. There are a number of walks which you can do in the gorge and I as I had a lot to do I chose the simple loop. This involved walking alongside the river through the old remains of the gold processing plants and over a wobbly suspension bridge.
As the gorge narrowed, the views became more dramatic until I arrived at the trackbed of the old railway line. From here, I crossed the river on the old bridge before plunging into a 1km tunnel through the hillside which returned me to my starting point. The tunnel was cold and it seemed to take ages to get through, avoiding the drips on the way!
At the other end of the tunnel, where I had parked my car was a double decker bridge over the river, the bottom part still carried the road whilst the top part used to carry the old railway line. Most impressive!
Back in the car and further up the gorge. At the other end is a 6km preserved railway with a nice little wooden station. Trains weren't running when I visited as it was the middle of Winter, but it did look quite cool. The far end of the railway is in the town of Waihi which revolves around gold mining.
These days though, instead of digging deep tunnels, there is a huge opencast mine which you would not know about unless you stumbled upon it. I stopped at the Info centre and a little path takes you to the lip of a huge hole! Little diggers and trucks beavered away at the bottom extracting ore. At the lip was the remains of an old pumping house, the design based upon the traditional Cornish pump house, very overgrown now.
From Waihi, I headed North up the wiggly road which takes you up the East coast of the peninsula. This is where I really heard the screeching of the tyres as there are lots of sharp wiggly bits! The views got better and better and at one point, after dropping down from a mountain pass, I had to stop and get a better look.
Next stop was Cathedral Cove Marine reserve. I parked the car in the car park and ate my sandwiches, had a cup of tea and put my shorts on! It was so nice and sunny, you wouldn't have thought it was the middle of winter at all.
The sign said that Cathedral Cove was 45 minutes away, so I walked at top speed. Twenty minutes later I was there and it was so beautiful. You drop down from the cliff tops down some wooden steps and there is a beach with a natural arch, the cathedral through which one can see the beach next door. I could have spent all day down here, it was so quiet and tranquil. My schedule for the day was a bit heavy, so after picking up some nice shells I made my way back to the car and had an ice cream - yum!
I then drove North again to look at Cook's Beach where Capt. Cook landed, and to the end of the road where a ferry takes one across to Whitianga very nice. No time today for the ferry though, so I headed back down South to Hot Water Beach!
This is what I really wanted to see and why I needed the tide times from Thames. Hot Water Beach is a long beach split in two by a large rock outcrop. At the base of the outcrop is a hot water spring and at low tide, one can dig a hole in the beach and have a hot water bath. Then, as the tide comes in the water cools and refreshes! I'd brought a spade from Raj's school to dig my hole and it was so beautiful splashing around as the sun went down. The water in places was scalding hot and there were quite a few other people around, it was incredible!
By then it was going dark and I was a tad worried as I was running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere! Fortunately I just made the next garage before it shut and with a full tank headed for home.
One of the places that I really wanted to visit and couldn't without my own transport was Waitomo Caves. This is where you can go Black Water Rafting, basically, caving with a rubber inner tube! So, I jumped in my little starlet and headed West, across the back roads. The scenery on the way reminded me of the South Peak District of England� on steroids. Very nice.
I arrived at the caves just in time for the next trip, so after a bite for lunch, I joined three other chaps and our guide for the briefing. We had to squeeze ourselves into wet suit salopettes, pop on a fleece top, then a wet suit jacket, plus some shorts, wet suit socks and some dinky white shoes - yeurch! They were already wet too so I was not impressed. Then we jumped into a little bus and drove up the road, parked up and picked up a rubber tube.
Our first test was jumping backwards into a nearby stream. It was after I'd jumped in that we realised that my rubber ring was a bit small, so we upgraded. These child bearing hips get me every time. Next we climbed up the hill, dropped our rings down a hole in the ground and set off to a special extra section which we could do as we were in a small group. We had to crawl through a small hole into the cave, then down a narrow slit which I managed to completely bodge up and ended up hanging on by my fingers, with my legs dangling - doh!
We then splashed about in the water filled tunnels, picked up our rings and glided along. At one point we came to an underground waterfall which seemed quite large and we had to jump backwards into the water below! I was quite apprehensive as we had to jump out to avoid a rock ledge. When I did jump, I missed the rock ledge but also somehow came detached from my ring, I was ok though.
The instructor then recommended that we climbed back up and did it again forwards. So, we climbed back up and when I did the jump forwards, I completely lost the ring and sank down into the pool! The instructor said it was quite cool to see my headlamp drifting down under the water, but was quite relieved to see me pop back up again! I'd swallowed a load of water so was coughing and spluttering. I'm not very good with watery things, especially many feet underground.
After the waterfall, we got back in our rings and spent most of the time drifting along in the darkness with our lights switched off. This was because there were loads of gloworms on the ceilings and walls of the caves and it looked like amazing constellations of fluorescent stars in a night time sky, very beautiful. Then, it was all over and after a nice hot shower, some soup and a tasty bagel, it was time to check out the museum and then to hit the open road.
Next stop was Te Awamutu - most people wondered why I would go there, but it was on the way back in a roundabout way. This town is where Tim and Neil Finn of Split Enz/Crowded House/solo career fame grew up and you can do a little tour around. I tried to find their old house, but it's an old people's home now! There also was an exhibition in the museum which was pretty interesting. Most of the other places of interest were a little boring, like their old school, but hey, it was worth a look.
There is an old wooden church in the town too, which was not destroyed along with the majority of European buildings during the Maori-European war. There is a also plaque for the brave Maoris who, during the battle took water across the battlefield to their enemies who were wounded. Incredible.
Lazy day today, nothing much to report, off to Wanganui tomorrow for the weekend, so it'll be goodbye to Raj and Gloria in the morning, time to pack!
I packed my things together and chucked them in my car with heavy heart. I'd had a great time staying with the Barard Clan and I was sad to see me go. They are heading off to Australia tomorrow anyway so it's not like I could have seen them for much longer, but it had been smashing.
So, after my goodbyes, I headed South towards Wanganui. I took a cross country route rather than the main highway and made some good progress. Unfortunately, as I headed towards Tongariro National Park, the weather started to close in. I did manage to get one picture in, with a cool rainbow, but after that it was lots of drizzle.
When I reached to village of National Park, I took a small detour to look at the Raurimu Spiral. This is where the main Auckland to Wellington railway line had to ascend 200 metres in a very short distance. To accomplish this, the surveyors designed a spiral where the railway line doubles back on itself to gain extra height. I'd seen one of these before on the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales which was a good job, because today all I could see was misty trees! I had some lunch to see if any trains would come and one freight train rumbled past, but I couldn't wait for ever for the weather to clear, time to be off!
On my next part of the journey I stopped to look at an amazing river gorge and found a car parked up with it's bonnet up and a mother and son scratching their heads. I asked if I could help as we were in the middle of nowhere and she said that she heard a funny noise and then the battery light came on. Next, the car started to overheat. The next funny noise was my brain getting in to gear and like a flash came the thought that the fan belt had gone! I had a look under the bonnet and, lo and behold, one broken fanbelt. I politely told her that in England, if one breaks a fanbelt, the best alternative solution is a pair of tights. She didn't look impressed and told me that she would wait and see if the car cooled down instead. What did I say?!
Next stop was Ohakune which is one of the snow centres of the region. I stopped a Utopia cafe for an enlightening cup of coffee before heading up the mountain road to have a look at the slopes. Well, I actually headed up into thick cloud and did see some mucky snow but it did look very miserable up there.
On to Wanganui and once the road started dropping out of the mountain region towards the Wanagnui National Park the scenery and weather improved dramatically. There were gorgeous cliffs and ridges which were crying out to be walked, waterfalls and lofty peaks. The big ridges were all grass too which looked really easy on the feet. I couldn't stop though as it was getting dark and by the time I hit Wanganui night had closed in.
Deane and Susan are friend's of James and Ruth and although I had met them before, it was yonks ago. They have three kids, Alana, Kieran and Ruth who are 6, 3 and 1 if I remember rightly so quite a lively household! It's great to have somewhere to stay though and we had a really nice meal together before retiring to the lounge.
I spotted the Bagpuss video in their collection, so we watched a few episodes of that, including the classic "Mouse Mill" before watching an episode of "Heartbeat" for a dose of Yorkshire!
Today I planned to have a look around the city, checking out the points of interest. It was a beautiful day, so my first port of call was the Durie Tower elevator. A lift built from the river to a developing suburb in 1919. I had a chat with the woman operator and she spends all day in that lift going up and down. I wouldn't fancy that, it didn't half wobble around.
At the top was a lookout tower so I climbed stacks of steps to the top to be rewarded with some cracking views. I really wanted to see Mount Taranaki the old volcano to the West, but it was too hazy that way. I was well puffed when I reached the top too, I'm not very fit!
From there I headed into town and had a look at the Velodrome, which I had spotted from the tower, but couldn't work out what it was, then to the information centre. This had a great 3D relief map of the area including the national park as well as the usual forests of leaflets.
From there it was to the Sarjeant Art Gallery where there were some impressive paintings and exhibits. I think my favourites were by the local artist Nigel Brown, shame there were no postcards of his work. Next to the musuem where there are lots of things to see including lots of amazing Maori carvings and bits and pieces. After that, I went to the riverboat museum to have a look at the boats which had been restored and are being restored including an old paddlesteamer. The paddlesteamer was out up the river somewhere and apart from some good pictures, that was about that!
Back then to Deane and Susan's for a mini-expedition with the kids. Deane and Ruth stayed behind whilst the rest of us set off to Castlecliff Beach. The beach is quite strange because the sand is black but what was more impressive was the huge amount of driftwood on it! There were huge tree trunks all over the place which we had to scramble across to reach the sea. We also visited another beach further down the coast and on the way back, got a gorgeous view of the sunset with a faint outline of Mount Taranaki, hurrah!
Tomorrow - a mountain walk!
Time to get up early as I was off on a walk with Susan�s Dad. He picked me up, just after 7 am and we drove North for a couple of hours. When I had passed through on the Friday, it was very misty, so I was hoping that the weather would be better this time.
It was! We had a crystal clear day, with a few flurries of cloud over the main peaks. We did a walk through the national park. It started from Whakapapa village, through the bush, to a remote mountain hut and then back via the Silica Rapids. The views were stunning, we walked under the face of Mount Ruahpehu, and active volcano which is actually due an eruption. I was quite relieved when it didn�t blow up whilst we were near it, especially when we saw some of the damage from the last major eruption.
After we finished the walk, we drove up the Bruce Road to the top where the ski village is. Again, the only bit which was open was the beginner�s slopes and it was strange to see the chair lifts over volcanic rock with no snow! There was plenty of snow further up, but obviously not in enough quantities to ski and board.
I was really tired when we got back, but happy that I�d got a better impression of the National Park and the mountains. It�s a shame we couldn�t have done the Tongariro Crossing, one of the famous one day tramps of the region, but it was a crampon and ice axe day and we had neither with us. My ice axe is in Congleton by my Mum�s front door ready for use against any Security System Salesmen who refuse to leave the doorstep!
It was time to move on from Wanganui and thanks to Raj and Gloria, I had somewhere to stay in Wellington. Doug and Sally are friends of Raj and Gloria from their YWAM days and were prepared to give me a bed and some food! Hurray!
I moved from a family of kids aged 1, 3 and 6 to a family with kids aged 2, 4 and 7! Tom is 2, Emily is 4 and Hannah is 7. My first morning in their house, I awoke and thought I heard angels singing outside my door, but it was actually the three children singing �Rise and Shine... lazybones!�
I took a random route to Wellington, heading across the country before heading South, this is because I wanted to visit the museum for the Rimutaka Incline. The Rimutaka Incline was a section of the old railway line to Wellington which climbed a 1 in 15 slope to get over the mountains. The trains gained purchase by gripping a central rail which was laid up the hill rather than using a rack system. Pretty interesting stuff and on another day I would have liked to have walked the lonely route across the mountains, but I had to get my hire care back!
The road still took a spectacular route over the mountain pass and much tyre squealing was in evidence as I hassled a huge Toyota Celica which was going far too slow! Once down the other side, the road went down the Hutt Valley (no sign of Jabba) and gave an amazing view of Wellington and the harbour.
So, I dropped off my little car, very dirty after a few muddy road experiences, and was picked up by Sally and the kids then whisked back to their house.