Off Roading

  Waikaremoana, New Zealand
Sunday, May 27, 2007

We had to get to Napier by the following morning and had 2 choices - go sotuh back to Taupo and then drive east, or go east via Waikaremoana National Park and then head south. Our plans had completely gone out of the window by this time, so rather than drive back to Taupo we decided to take the latter option and see a wee bit of scenery before it got dark. We knew this might nopt be easy as our maps indicated a fair bit of unsealed roads, but we thought what the hell, weŽve done it before so why not again.

Well, we got to the start of the park and there was a sign telling us there was 96km of unsealed roads! We carried on nevertheless and soon we were on dirt roads with rain threatening all the time. I really thought we might have to turn back at one point when the camper slid around in the mud, but slowly and surely we continued making progress. And the views were pretty damn good. The sun was setting so the light was not good enough for photos of the best stuff later on but I guess weŽll have to keep it in our memories!



We arrived at the small village of Waikaremoana late at night and hunted round for a place to park the van. Since it was so dark and the water so still, I almost drove down a boat ramp into the lake! But we found a place to park and made up the bed. HereŽs a pic from the morning. You can see how muddy it was by the state of the van!



There were then one or 2 good views of the lake as we proceeded to the other side of the park the next morning.



The plan was to tie up with Keith and Cathy in Napier (they were in New Zealand on their honeymoon), but we worked out they would be travelling through the town of Wairoa at about the same time as us, so after a mad dash down country roads, that is what we did....