North Island Whanganui River Road

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Whanganui River Road and Tongariro NP
December 6, 2008


We had so much fun today! We decided we had seen enough of Wellington to satisfy us. I know that many tourists stay a week there and we walked around for only four hours. But, we have such a short time on the North Island that we felt the need to get a move on.

There is a town called Wanganui and a river called Whanganui (long story why they’re spelled differently) but we saw both today. Wanganui was having some sort of celebration with booths and bands and lots of food. The town is raising money to restore a cable car and we listened to a gentleman tell us the history of that venture for about 15 minutes, or so it seemed. The city has already restored a paddle-wheel steamboat that had previously sunk to the bottom of the river and people were taking rides on it. It was a festive scene. Wanganui is a town known for its glassmaking and we went to the “best” studio and watched a master glassblower giving a class on making paperweights. Joe thought “Paperweights” is probably Glassblowing 101.

We never seem to take the easy route to anywhere. Our goal today was Tongariro NP, and there are a couple of nice paved highways that lead to the park. We chose the Whanganui River Road that has roughly 50 kilometers of unpaved rough road in addition to 50 kilometers of narrow paved road, all of it narrow, curvy, and mountainous. It is a beautiful route that runs along the river gorge. We met very few vehicles and most of them were construction trucks. About a third of the way in we had a nice surprise. We came upon the wee Maori settlement of Koriniti and the sign said “Visitors Welcome” so we entered a little apprehensively. We stayed about a half hour exploring the marae (place of meeting houses). The entire time we were there we saw no tourists and no Maori people. There were homes around the marae and people may have been watching us but we saw nobody. I felt a little like an intruder, but we enjoyed seeing the real deal.

About six miles before the end of the river road we rounded a corner and were hit in the face with all three active volcanoes of Tongariro NP. It was a stunning view and we weren’t expecting it. This isn’t your typical national park with its golf course in the shadow of a volcano and a ski area on a volcano. We took a drive up to the ski area on Mt. Ruapehu to gaze at the views.

It took us a couple of hours to get ready for tomorrow. We are hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing that is reputedly one of “greatest day hikes in the world.” Around 70,000 people hike this track in a year. We rented hiking poles, and I bought some new socks. This is tough 12 miles and I’m not sure I should be doing this. A shuttle is picking us up at 5:45 in the morning and will give us 8 hours to finish.

To help get our act together for this hike, we got a nice room at a beautiful spot, the Discovery Lodge that is just outside the park and the pretty Maori lady in reception was friendly and knowledgeable of the area.

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