What to do on a wet and overcast morning in Rotorua? Go to the Redwood Forest

A day of thermal pools, sulphur smells and a waterfall. Not to mention a bit of driving and some rain.

Tokaanu Thermal Pools

Lake Taupo

Taupo Spa Thermal Park

Hula Falls

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park

Mud Pools

Some shopping and then our journey on the Forgotten World Highway began. Highway is a misnomer as we spent the next 4 hours predominantly in third gear and covered less than 150 km with nary a straight section to provide respite from the bends.

The Republic of Whangamomona, which once upon a time was a thriving town boasting the headquarters of the local council. It is somewhat less prosperous today. And one of several almost deserted towns along this road

An abandoned railway line follows the Forgotten World Highway and for a fee you can hire one of these converted golf buggies and take a self drive tour along the old railway line

A tale of two railway bridges

This is where we almost got bogged in the loose gravel when we stopped to have lunch

Today Keiran decided that he wanted to spend some time and check out New Plymouth while I wanted to go to Mount Taranaki / Egmont. So after fuelling up I dropped Keiran in New Plymouth and drove off to spend the day in Mount Taranaki National Park. We both had enjoyable and satisfying days.

New Plymouth Museum

Conveniently Keiran stumbled upon New Plymouth on the day that they were having their Christmas parade:

Mount Taranaki / Egmont National Park

Wellington was much bigger than we expected and it took an age for us to get out into the countryside again.

The North Island is certainly very different to the South Island and today was spent driving through green rolling countryside reminiscent of parts of New South Wales and Victoria when not in drought. Our original destination for today was to have been Whanganui but due to having a real highway to drive on with a general absence of bends, we arrived quite early but we did get to enjoy the Winter Gardens

And Virginia Lake

Opunake

We had planned to spend the night free camping in this beautiful spot but after an experience with a carload of local hooligans and a warning from one of the locals we decided to move to the lake and free camp there instead

Today we added water wings to our van to cross the Cook Strait. But we began the day with two detours: a walk at Karaka Point

And a visit to the foreshore market at Picton where we discovered that we were hugely ripped off when we bought jade at Hokitika paying prices about ten times higher than similar pieces at the Picton market. Not happy and a warning to others – do not buy jade at Hokitika!

Then it was off to join the queue for the inter island ferry, almost a two hour wait

And then we were aboard for some smooth sailing and no need for sea sickness pills

Wellington

Our only stop today was the WOW museum of wearable art & classic cars at Nelson.

Picton

We spent most of today at the top of the South Island doing some walks.

Pillar Point Lighthouse walk

Today we drove on more winding roads than at any other time since we’ve been here in New Zealand. One road chokers from sea level to 800 metres in just several kilometres and then back down again. That was just the first of many winding roads today use not just by us but also by semi trailers and b doubles and tourist buses, a bit scary on the bends especially as there was a scarcity of guard rails.

Kaiteriteri Beach

The hill

View from Dirk Hartog memorial. This is Golden Bay, where in 1643 Dirk Hartog landed in New Zealand after sailing from the Batavia now Jakarta in Java via Mauritius to here.

Wainui Falls

Te Waikoropupu Springs

Collingwood, a town reminiscent of Daintree Village in Far North Queensland, except Collingwood has been almost destroyed by fire 5 times

Whilst there is a shorter and more direct route from Murchison to Kaiteriteri, we chose the longer and more winding road via St Arnaud.

Our first stop was at Kawatiri where we did a walk over an abandoned railway bridge and tunnel built in 1923. As we received conflicting information about this we’re not sure if there was actually a railway from Murchison to Nelson which was subsequently discontinued or whether they started building the railway line but never finished it. In any case it was a short but enjoyable walk which included some beech forest

Nelson Lakes