Driving, driving, driving…

We’re now on day 11 of our North Island Campervan Adventure, and have driven over 1900km of mostly wiggly windy roads (which are the main highways, just not bearing any resemblance to the M6 thank god). We’ve wiggled our way down to Wellington and are now heading back North to Auckland for Saturday when we have to say goodbye to Bertha (the van).

I think I last left off in Roturua where we soaked ourselves to prunes in the hot springs. We headed South a hundred km or so to Taupo – along the ‘Thermal Highway’ so there was lots of steamy streams and a big fat geothermal powerstation. We spent an afternoon hiding from the rain in Taupo (involving coffee, internet, bakery visiting and soup eating in our van), and then decided to get a bit wet and do a short walk to a natural hot springs bathing spot – a hot stream spilling out into the river. Was quite surreal getting into my bikini in the cold and drizzle, but once I was sat on the slightly slimy bottom of the stream in the toasty water, it was worth it :-) 

We spent the night in a free campsite next to the river, and then on our way out of town thought we’d have a quick look at the Taupo Bungy. A quick look at the bungy ended up with Chris having a go (surprise surprise) and you can watch the video here www.rootfest.com/jump.mp4  - crazy fool jumping 47m headfirst towards a river.

That was enough excitement for one day, so we spent the rest of the day driving across the country to Napier, on the East Coast. Napier sits smack bang in the middle of Hawkes Bay wine country, so it seemed obligatory to partake in the wine drinking. So we chose to go on a tour as then we could both sample the goodies and not worry about driving. Our friendly guide, Ian, gave us a fab tour and obviously knew his stuff about all the local wines. We ended up trying about 6 wines at 3 wineries, and they were not small portions. After also visiting a beer and cider company, I was quite sozzled! Was a great afternoon and I even learned stuff too :-)

From Napier, we headed south hugging the coast down towards Wellington, and overnighted in a Department of Conservation campsite (a field) on the edge of Tararua National Park. Again, the sky was leaking so we only did a small walk around the river but it was a nice stretch of legs after driving all morning. We had the field to ourselves all night and were constantly serenaded by the rain hammering on the roof of the van – vans are great but they do tend to get hot when it’s hot, cold when it’s cold and sound like the rain is in your ears in a downpour. We had our first glimpse of NZ snow on the journey from Tararua to Wellington along with a whole lot of farmland.

We spent a couple of days in Wellington, and met up with a friend from Sydney who has just moved over so she showed us all the sights in an afternoon. There’s not much camping to be had in Welly, so we had to stay about 15km outside and then drive back into town in the morning. We spent a great morning exploring Te Papa museum and Weta Cave – the company who made the models/costumes etc for Lord of the Rings and Narnia.

Some pics of Welly:

We drove a couple of hours North of Wellington for our campsite for the night, at Foxton Beach and arrived for a spectacular sunset:

We continued driving North the next day and drove through some quite pretty countryside on the way to Tongariro National Park:

We were aiming towards Ohakune, but got there quite early so decided to carry on North to Whakapapa ski resort – right on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu (an active volcano that last had a major eruption in 1996). The summit was clouded over as we drove up – typical:

But as we got closer, the clouds drifted away (or we drove past them) and revealed the snow capped crater and summit:

We drove all the way up to the ski lifts which were being assembled (guys lifting chairs onto the chairlift cable) ready for the start of the season in 2 weeks time. So we couldn’t ski, but we’re planning on doing some on the South Island in a couple of weeks.

We stayed in Whakapapa village overnight (so so so cold) and awoke to rain that turned into sleet just as we were doing our morning chores of emptying the van of ‘waste’. Lovely. First proper snowfall we’ve seen for 18 months though… We were going to do a walk, but seeing as everywhere was covered by cloud, we decided to head on down the mountain and get some more km under our belts.

We headed West towards the sticky-out bit on the North Island – Taraknaki region. The State Highway that heads that way, is known as the ‘Forgotten World Highway’ and is 155km of farmland, jungle lined gorges, amazing windy roads up to grass covered ridges, and no shops or petrol. Luckily I read the petrol part in the Lonely Planet or we may have come unstuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The scenery was amazing and the photos don’t quite do it justice:

The Forgotten World Highway ends in Stratford – the gateway to the Taranaki region, named for Mt Taranaki, a 2500m volcano dominating the surrounding flat countryside. We drove up as close as you can get to the summit and still couldn’t see it… maybe tomorrow…

Tomorrow… the sun is shining and the misty mountain appeared!