Today has been a day of two halves, just like one of Monty’s football matches. This morning when we got up it was absolutely bucketing down with rain and the forecast for the journey to Lake Taupo was rain all the way. A weather front was working its way down the North Island in a South Easterly direction dumping 100mm of rain on its way. Yesterday evening, the internet service provider whom the Top 10 campsites use was upgrading their servers and normal service was to be resumed at 08.00. Unfortunately, that did not appear to happen, so the emails and banking that we have been trying to do for the last few days still didn’t happen.
After breakfast we loaded up and set off to Napier town centre as there were some buildings etc that we still wanted to photograph despite the intense rain. With the Kodak moments out of the way and refuelled we were on our way around 10.15. The journey to Taupo was only about 150kms, but the roads looked as though they were fairly twisty on the map, which means it takes a lot more time. In practice the roads had long sweeping curves as opposed to sharp twists and turns, which did reduce the average speed, but there were three other factors in the equation today. 1, Intense rain. 2. Road works, we never went for more than about 20kms without another set of road works. It was like being back on the M25. 3. Lorries – loads of the buggers. Mostly stock lorries ferrying sheep and cattle around or lumber trucks returning to reload after taking wood from the mountains to Napier docks.
To break the journey we decided to stop for morning coffee exactly half way to Taupo at a truckers cafe right on the peak between the Maungaharuru Range and the Ahimanawa Range (hope you got those as we will be asking questions when we return), but that was a serious mistake. Thinking it would be a decent cup of coffee in chipped mugs and a slab of bread pudding like Aunt Doll used to make, we were disappointed. It was not bad coffee, but in paper cups and no cake. The facilities were outside and basic and we were the only ones there – all bad signs. On the way we did not stop for a single photograph until we reached Wiapunga Falls about 65kms before Taupo, almost a world record. Despite the atrocious weather the falls deserved a photograph and the rain even eased for a while whilst we took the pictures.
Moving on, we were about 20 Kms from Taupo and a clearly defined demarcation line started to appear in the sky between the black rain clouds and clear blue sky. Most weird. In the final approach to the lake, the weather turned from sheeting rain to clear blue sky in a matter of minutes, so by the time we got out of the car, it was warm and sunny with a great view over the lake. The sun continued to beat down all afternoon, so we took advantage of it and had lunch on the lakeside, followed by a quick visit round the local museum, art gallery and an ethnic garden that won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2004, which has been rebuilt alongside the museum. The museum & gallery were a bargain to enter as they are only the second establishment that we have been in that offers a discount to senior citizens. The other being the Chinese Garden in Dunedin. From the museum we went to Huka Falls just up the road for some more photos to stop the camera from rusting up. Whilst the sun was still shining we then went to an area where there is a thermal power station and stopped for afternoon tea at yet another weird cafe. This establishment was also up for sale and not really surprising as it looked very tired and was in need of considerable investment. The owners seemed nice enough people and we soon got chatting with the man of the house, who it turns out had been to the UK on 4 occasions to race in the Isle of Man TT races and apart from his racing machines he also owns 4 old BMW bikes, two with old Steib sidecars. The table lamps were made of old pistons and con rods welded together and the place was simply full of motorcycle memorabilia and general junk. Outside there were chickens, ducks, peacocks, guinea fowl and all sorts of other birds, just wandering around. It actually bought a new meaning to free range chickens as there was a couple of baby chickens wandering around inside the cafe. How do we manage to pick these places?
We then want to Aratiatia Rapids, which is where there’s a hydroelectric power station and at various times of the day they let water through the dam gates and it runs through the rapids with tremendous force. Fortunately the water was coming through the sluices whist we were there so we saw the full force of the water in action.
By now it was late afternoon and we had to find this evenings lodgings, so we stopped the sightseeing and headed for ‘home’. As we can no longer keep food in a fridge, we have to buy fresh every day; one disadvantage of no longer having the campervan! That means we have to shop every day, which is definitely bad news.
Hopefully the weather will be good tomorrow as we intend to finish our sightseeing here in Taupo and then head off to Rotorua for the sulphurous stench and the bubbling mud – we can’t wait.
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