New Zealand April 28th- Turangi to Mt Maunganui

Tonight we will stay in the shadow of our new friend, Mt Maunganui.

Obviously I was not flying and need to thank Google images for this photo that gives an idea of what the mountain is like. You can even see some of the tracks!!

We travelled through the morning and were in Tauranga in time to find ourselves some lunch, after stopping for a cuppa along the way. The thermos has come in quite handy and I'm glad we brought it along.
We did have to divert a little near Putaruru when the road we were wanting  was closed due to a washout. Luckily Trev was on the ball and managed to find a good work around that didn't take too much time.

There were lots of logging trucks coming over the range into Tauranga and lots of other trucks on the steep windy road too, due to the fact that it is a busy port. When we got here we saw all the ships loading and unloading and it all made sense.

We travelled through quite a lot of cow country today, with dark dark mud (even at this time of year) and rolling green hills. This many-sided shed was interesting. 

When we got to Tauranga we found a park and went for a walk. I had read that there were some interesting statues here in the park.  There were also lots of kids making use of the warm day and doing what kids do (from varying heights) 

But these statues were the main attraction....The Hairy McClary characters are represented in bronze, and the kids can sit on them, pat them etc.  Apparently the writer, Linley Dodd came from here.

Slinky Malinki

Scarface Claw

Bottomly Potts 

Muffin McClay

Schnitzel Von Krumm (just for you Sue and Daryl)

Hercules Morse

Zachary Quack whispering into his ear!

And everyone's favourite- the hairy one himself. 

Kids were out in force enjoying the spouts in the water playground and lots of people were sitting in the sunshine, chatting, reading and smiling.

Once we had soaked that all in, we drove over the bridge,  checked in to our motel (in a quiet part of town near the Mt. ) and headed off to walk.

Trip advisor had said that the walk to the top was rough and steep with many steps, and that the base walk was lovely with great views. We had agreed to walk the base , but when we got a start on  the path we came to a sign telling us it was closed due to a slip! ...oh well, so much for doing the sensible thing. There was now no choice but to go to the top. The ankle won't be thanking me later tonight. 

If there is a tsunami in the area the plan is to climb the mountain. (The green zones are safe) . Apparently you should not drive in a Tsunami, you should go on foot. You have about 40 minutes from the time of the quake to get yourself to safe ground.  All very reassuring. 

There were a number of hang gliders hanging around in the thermals 

View from the summit

Looking north

My favourite mountain climber

The tracks were a bit complicated and some were closed. Sorry about the reflections. We headed left (clockwise) from the bottom of the screen on the red track. Then on to green and yellow to the summit. Then down via yellow, green and blue.

The harbour looking south looks beautiful and calm, with black sand, but apparently has quite a rip.
The beach on the other side is white sand and surf and quite popular.

We enjoyed our best meal by far at a little spot called Phil's Place next to the marina.  While there, we checked out some of the memorabilia and realised this place belongs to Phil Rudd, bad boy drummer from AC/DC!!

New Zealand April 27th - Railcarting

Another beautiful day dawned for us today, and we were very glad, because we had already booked in to go railcarting. This would not be fun in wet or cold weather.

We didn't have a lot of spare time, but we tried our luck with a couple of scenic lookouts on the way to Taumarunui,  where the trip starts from.   We have learned on this trip that a scenic lookout in NZ may or may not have a scenic view. We lucked out on one today with some spectacular views over the area below once we climbed the steps and viewing tower. At the other we could  not see the view because of the trees thickly obscuring it.

The drive to Tuamarunui is only 50 km,  but takes close to an hour due to the winding road. 

We still arrived with enough time to get some lunch and to sit in the main street and get a bit of a feel for this country town, which is somewhat reduced in size from its heyday, when it was a thriving logging centre. 

The main train line still passes through town, and this clock is a novel nod to the part that the railway has had in the life of the town. The rail carts run on a side line, no longer used by the rail services. There are a number of tourist attractions somewhat like it in NZ, ,making use of the disused lines.  Apparently they have also converted some of them to bike tracks as we have in SA. 

Forgotten world is the name of the business,  but also the name used for the area, which the locals seem to think was neglected and forgotten by the rest of the country for many years.  Now they are making a name of it. 

They use converted golf buggies (made in Augusta- home of the US Open). Originally they used them with tyres, but now they have plastic wheels made to fit the rails which work well, except in very wet weather. 

There is also a pedal option, but we had opted for the petrol powered carts.  Ours was a bit sick, and would go full power (about 20km/hr) or not at all. So that was a bit frustrating for someone who is usually such a smooth driver as Trev is. It also decided to backfire (sometimes inside the tunnel) which was a bit scary when not expected.  

Drops caught on a spiderweb on the side of the track

Could not resist trying to capture the contrast of bright delicate plant against hard railway rocks.

The trip covered 32 km and 5 tunnels (the longest being 1.5km long , and very cold). Some of the tunnels are made of cement and the local rock, but later they had no rock to use, and used local clay to make bricks.  Those tunnels are quite beautiful in their own way.  How on earth did they manage to dig tunnels from both ends and meet in the middle accurately so long ago???

Matiere was the turn around point for us.  Time to stop and have a cuppa and snack, and to wonder how a tiny spot that seems to have only about 8 rundown homes and no remaining businesses except the local club manages to field 2 netball teams and maintain a town hall so well. Obviously town spirit runs deep and people pull together here as they do in many of our country towns in SA.

I had never seen a turntable like this before.  Pick it up from the side of the track, fit it together on the rails, drive on, manually turn the cart around, and you are ready to head in the other direction. Very basic. Very practical.

Turning a cart

One of the locals

View of the track

Some of the buildings are getting a bit run down. 

This bird graces the main street in Taumarunui 

We have been observing the roadworks here with wonder while we have been driving around. Today was no different. Each sign needs at least one cone to make sure you pay attention. If there is a bit of a slip spilling on to the road you may find a cone has been placed there by someone (presumably a road worker) when it seriously appears that they could have just picked up a shovel and got it off of the road in the space of a minute or two.

New Zealanders also seem to have a strong belief in using a LOT of cones to indicate where to drive. Here is an example we spotted today. Apologies for photos taken through car windscreen.

Having said all that, we also came around a bend to find two road workers filling a pothole with no signs , cones or warning at all!!

We have been incredibly fortunate with the weather in the last week or so.
Tomorrow we head North again , with only a couple more days in NZ.  It feels as though we are starting to head for home.

New Zealand April 26th-White Water rafting

Two unusual things we saw this morning:
-A man walking through the centre of town in his boots and waders with fishing rod and 2 trout in his basket.
-An old man walking through the centre of town with a large (multi day) backpack on his back balancing a 4.5kg gas cylinder on the top of his backpack.
Unfortunately we didn't have a camera with us at the time.

This is a small and unusual town built on the trout fishing, river and outdoors adventures, geothermal activity, and hydro electricity.

We added to the industry by booking in for one of the local companies (Tongariro River Rafting) to take us on a trip.

We were picked up where we were staying and taken back to their base in town, where we were kitted up with wetsuits,  booties, fleeces, life jackets and helmets ready for the adventure.

Then we were taken out to the start of the trip at the Pouto intake (known as Access 10 by the rafters). This gives a reliable grade 3 rapid, which is not so gentle that is it boring, but easy enough for first timers to handle.

Trev and I both remembered rafting being much tougher last time we tried it (30 years ago) so we are not sure what level we did that time.

We enjoyed rafting  the 55 or so rapids with the 4 nurses from San Francisco and our guide , and relearning how to get down, hold on, paddle and move cross the boat as required. Trev even chose to do a cliff jump part way down the river where it was a bit deeper.

We also stopped along the way to pick up a scientist who had been working, picking up sound recorders. He now has over 300 hours of sound to listen to to try to identify whether there are kiwis in the area.

As with many of our experiences in this area,  the water was breathtakingly clear, and we were able to admire ferny cliffs, mini waterfalls and the endangered blue duck as we rafted along.

We finished up with a bit of a soak in one of the hot pools,  before some hot soup back at the base. Overall a fun afternoon which left us pretty weary.

Hot pool

I think that today was one of the most persuasive arguments for a Go Pro camera. It would have been great to take footage of some of the action to remind us later, but there was no way our camera was coming rafting.

New Zealand-Anzac Day April 25th

After a tough day yesterday we took it easy this morning and lay in bed listening to some of our neighbours getting up and about early for the Dawn service.

Information was scant about how to find the service here.  We opted for our own bacon and egg breakfast cooked on the basic facilities of our kitchen (missing an electric fry pan ) before finally getting ourselves into gear and doing some planning for the next couple of days.

We now have a basic plan for adventures to come, which meant that if we were going to find time to do the walk around Lake Rotopounamu it needed to happen today. Trev needed a bit of a stretch for his hips and calves anyway, so we decided to go for it and have a bit of a look at this walk which is a favourite around here.  It was another mild sunny day, so perfect weather for a walk.

It didn't disappoint.

The circuit walk of around 6 km reminded us of some of the walks we have done in Qld, with many ferns and lush growth surrounding the track.

 In wet weather it would be spectacular but possibly a miserable and slippery walk in places. As we have found with other walks, the fact that it is around the lake does not necessarily mean that you are walking with views of the lake. Quite a lot of the time the track was bordered with growth and no hints of the lake below. There were a few patches of beach with fine gravel sand (one long area of beach)

Fine gravel sand

We walked along this beach on the gravel sand as part of the track. It sounded like a steam train quietly puffing away in a tunnel!

This beach was called 10 minute beach-a lovely calm spot about 25 minutes from the end of the loop walk. !!

We have seen warnings about baiting on a number of walks, and this was no exception. Baiting is used for a number of  animals -primarily possums, but also rats, cats, and others. They are spreading TB to cow and deer herds and endangering these industries. Today we saw the blue arrows on the trees and the small boxes where the bait is laid. We even saw a dead body in one of them! Mr sharp eyes figured out what the blue arrows were and spotted the boxes and continued to be much better than me at this game as we walked along. 

For our team of "The Diment Invincibles" he will definitely be required to take the lead in bait spotting, should it be required. He is also kicking goals in finding good Aussie red-he came home from a venture to buy parmesan cheese last  night with 2 bottles of Pepperjack shiraz. Now we will be forced to drink them both before we head for home🍷🍷

Bait indicator

You should always have at least on photo of the hire car.  This is our little Honda Fit-which is a bit gutless but pretty easy to drive. 

Here is Trev's track of the walk/stroll. As you can see from the time we took, we were not pushing very hard, although I am a bit surprised that it didn't show more climb. The track was lovely and wide enough for us to walk side by side pretty much all the way. This was great as we could just stroll along at an easy pace and chat away as we went. What an ideal way to spend a day of holidays!