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| Walls of green |
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| Technically, it’s a highway |
I`m writing today, so something clearly didn’t go as planned. I woke up and left Taupo at 6am, when it was still dark. The trees and hills tricked me from seeing the sunrise, but the morning was still beautiful. The first part of the road was fantastic, since it was almost completely empty and I could speed 120 kmph. But then I entered the Urewera National Park. Hills, but this time not the Scottish type, this time they were tropical type, completely covered in rainforest. The road started getting windy, but way more than yesterday – from some point on I couldn’t really go any faster than about 50 kmph. And then it got even more interesting as the road changed into a gravel track – here the average speed dropped to 30. But what amazing views! Driving on the side of the mountain, cliff up on one side, cliff down on the other, both covered in trees and bush, turning over sheer falls, driving between walls of green going several metres high, constant u-turns, maybe five cars and literally four settlements (not even villages) in over 150km. There was a huge amount of road kills, despite the low traffic, but that had a positive consequence – it’s the first time I saw birds of prey feeding in nature. I’m not sure what species exactly they were, but I managed to take pictures of one, so maybe someone will recognise them. Also, horses on the road. Quite a few, and definitely way more than cars.
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| Then suddenly, horse |
The consequence of taking this picturesque route was that instead of the expected 2.5 hours the travel took over 4, and left me quite tired (route 38, if I ever come back to you, it will be with someone else driving!). Moreover, when I got there it turned out that the weather is definitely not on my side – I could hardly see the Waikaremoana lake and the surrounding mountains from behind the fog or clouds. It was drizzling and the rather unpleasant lady in the DOC office said the weather will continue tomorrow. On top of that it turned out that walking here is a pretty expensive business – I knew that I’d need to pay around 25$ to sleep in a hut, but didn’t expect the boat ride that would take me from the end of the track to the parking lot to be another 100$. Long story short, I resigned from the Waikaremoana walk and went for a shorter free one, towards the lake Waikareiti.
The rainforest is beautiful, it really shows that nothing is lost or wasted in nature. Every last ray of sun, every last drop of water used, moss growing on bushes growing on trees, and everything so thick it was near impossible to get off the track. It was also horribly wet, especially that the track went through fields of young palm trees, or perhaps just ferns which soaked my trousers and changed my shoes into ponds. After every bush I went through I thought it would be impossible to get even more wet, but every next one must have taken it as a challenge to prove me wrong. Anyway, once I reached the lake I couldn’t stop myself from going skinny dipping, and it was fantastic. In total I did a 10 hour trip in 8 hours, and met two groups of people during all that time. Beautiful, quiet and empty.
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| That’s how wet my trousers and shoes were at the end of it |
Although really tired, after I came back I decided to drive to Wairoa in the hope of finding a shower or at last a public toilet where I could wash my clothes. I only found the latter, but it’s a something. I had a luxurious dinner (I’ve been eating canned fish and chicken all day, but for dinner I had canned fish *and beer*!) and slept like a baby on a parking lot next to a river.
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