New Zealand

A quiet free overnight by an inlet watching the fishermen and a walk around the town of Mana that sits on a peninsular so there is a shore on the other side with houses built on stilts. The New Zealand humor is very good as you can see by the house names.

We drove past the Ngawi site and onto another gravel track to go to Cape Pallister Lighthouse and climb the 250 wooden steps plus 3 concrete steps to the base of the lighthouse. Then back to Ngawi for an overnight. Sideways pictures again. The one thing to notice, New Zealand has public toilets everywhere even at the end of a gravel track, and a Tsunami zone.

With Waiohine behind us we stopped at Henley Lake carpark overnight, a freeby. Changed plans and headed for Pallister Winery for lunch and wine tasting. Excellent.  Then on to the next site at Ngawi.

We planned to go stay for 2 nights at the campground in the Waiohine Gorge. This is accessible via a winding, steep gravel road with fords, it sounded interesting. I have never driven a vehicle on such a rough road since I had a Land-rover. The van made it no problem, we were a little shaken about. There were a few vehicles at the end of the road at the campsite, but no-one arround! It reminded us of the film "The Wrong Turn" were the "family" at the end if the road lived off the people who took the wrong turn. It rained incessantly. We had lunch, took a look at the suspenson bridge and decided to get back to civilisation. 

We stopped at Palmerston North Holiday Park the get showers and sort the washing and freezer packs for the fridge. Nearby is the He Ara Kotahi Bridge, a modern foot bridge built as a tourist attraction. Is is stunning when lit up on an evening .

On our return from Sky Waka, there is a pleasant walk to some falls and a pool, made famous in the film the Hobbit. It is the location of Goloms pool.

We have this thing about cable cars, so we couldn't resist going on the Sky Waka up Mt. Ruapehu the top station as t at 2020 metres AMSL. Beautiful trip up, but as we reached the top we were into cloud, and unfortunately the walk we were going to do had been closed as you could hardly see the path. So a leisurely coffee at the top and we headed back down, only this time the cloud base was even lower, all the way to the bottom, very eerie.

The National Arm Museum is well worth a visit, it covers the New Zealand and Australia armies. From their inception through to the present day. They were involved in some of the worst fighting that the British empire was involved in, and it appears to my mine that all the dirty battles were given to the "colonials". The Boer wars, Gallipoli, Singapore, East Africa to name but a few. The large number of rifles and guns from matchlocks to modern assault rifles and machine guns is amazing. There are a large number of artillery pieces and tanks, through to ambulances and tuck wagons. Reproduction of trenches,  barracks,  fortification and a field hospital are very good, there is even a smell of antiseptic in the hospital tent. We had lunch in the "mess tent" before we went through to the exhibitions, there was a special display on in then entrance about the Holocaust, very harrowing.

Huka Falls is were the Waikato River is squeezed through a narrow of hard rock. The power of the water is something to behold. We stopped at the Camping ground near the falls a took a 9km walk taking in the falls, the local forest and the thermal springs park. 

Waimangu used to have a geyser that shot spouts of mud into the air, but after an eruption this ceased but gave way to 2 Volcanic lakes. The walk is one way and a bus returns to the start.

Skyline is an adventure park near Rotorua with a cable car and ski lifts going up and Luge rides and mountain bike track on the way down.  At the top is a restaurant and a sky swing. We booked 5 Luge runs and lunch. Great day out. We were served in the restaurant by a young woman from Newcastle.

The Skyline at Rotorua looked interesting.  Skyline So we paid it a quick visit to check it out and decide on what to do tomorrow when we have more time. Gondola, lunch and 5 Luge is on the list for tomorrow.😊 Overnight 7km away at Hamurana on the shores of L ake Rotorua 

Karangahake is an old mining complex of old workings, bridges and tunnels for railways. There are a few nice walks along the old train track and the old building, a nice afternoon walk.

We booked the ferry to South Island for the 5th March, we have finished our list for Northland (above Auckland), apart from more beaches, but we've had enough of those for the moment  so we thought it would be good idea to head south get through the Auckland traffic and start the next phase down to Wellington. A handy free stopover in Paeroa, the home of "Lemon and Paeroa" soft drink! No we hadn't heard of it either.

2km up the dirt track road (there are quite of these in NZ) to the guided walk. Very good. Glow worms are the larval form of the mould fly. The fly lays its eggs, about 20 in a cluster, on the ceiling of a damp cave, preferably over running water. The larva from first egg to hatch eats its siblings to gain enough energy to drop strands of sticky silk from the ceiling and to start glowing. Any flying insects in the dark cave are attracted to the glow and get ensared in the silk strands and eaten. The larva eventually pupates and turns into the fly stage to mate and start all over again. Fantastic to see when all the lights are turned out and your eyes adjust to the darkness. It does resemble the Milky Way.  sideways picture, to edit.

We arrived the free overnight campspot to find it very busy with visitors, but is went very quiet after 4pm. We had some mince that had been in a not cool box. That is a cool box that has no form of cooling i.e. warm. We made a bolognese out of it after testing it was OK. The caves can wait until tomorrow.  There is a information sign about the cave, noting that you will need a torch, helmet and be willing to wade up to the waist in water! That sounded a bit much to see a few glow worms! We looked a few metres into the entrance and decided it was not for us, the wading was not an option. Further investigation revealed that there was another entrance that had been improved for access 2km up the road. A guided walk into "Milky Way Glow Worm Cave" Off we went. waipu caves

We stopped off on the way to Waipu to Vist the Whangarei Falls.

Back to Kawakawa for a couple of hour trip on a vintage train, most of the carriages were from the 1800s. Nice gentle trundle down the centre of the main street of Kawakawa and out into the countryside. The train travels over uncontrolled Road crossings and the longest wooded railway bridge in the Southern Hemisphere.