Lost World - Forgotten World Highway

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What’s the story morning glory, well the story is we woke up Wednesday morning 21st Nov feeling like we could do with another spa session already, the aches, pains and tiredness from the last few days had come back. Still we just had to roll with it as we ventured on to see the mighty Huka Falls, this is a pretty hefty fall with the water thrusting thru at a really fast pace, which drives the turbines at a nearby hydroelectricity plant. Overnight less water goes thru as less electricity is required then. It was quite impressive to see with the water so slush puppie blue and a rainbow in the falls. Continuing further up the road it was time to go out of space as we arrived at Craters of the Moon (well kind of anyway). This was another thermal park but with a difference. The thermal areas were craters in the landscape with no water in them and just vegetation somehow growing in them, pretty impressive considering steam was blowing off them from being so hot. Thankfully it was a relatively a small park as we were on a pressing timescale so we quickly wandered round (well as fast as you can with me snapping away) to then continue our journey to Lake Taupo.

At this point we were beginning to reek of sulphur as it was sweating out of our skin (it was a really hot day), nice! This explained why you can’t wear jewellery for 24hrs, (silver 48hrs) after a thermal mud bath, as the sulphur would just discolour it. We could smell it in our skin every time say our hand went near our face, we would get a nice whiff of it. By the end of the next day our clothes and bedding reeked of the stuff. It was also washing day and it went a bit wrong for the second week running. Last week we overfilled the washing machine so it didn’t drain properly and had soaking wet clothes that took some monumental effort to get them dry, considering we’re always on the move and not often staying in the same place. This week the clothes that stank off sulphur no longer did but somehow the ones that didn’t now do, doh!! (How we hate wash days). Ourselves stopped smelling of sulphur on the third day afterwards, so be warned. It made us wonder when the Rotoruians fit spas in, as if during the week they would smell of it at work the next day, but then at the weekend they would smell of it wherever they went. Perhaps they all just smell of it and so just don’t notice.

Anyway as they say don’t look back in anger and moving on from this back to the lake. As mentioned in the Rotorua blog we were told this lake was supposed to massive, well it is just enormous, so much so you just can’t tell how big from looking at it. You can get some comprehension from just driving around it and as you go up the hills, but you probably can’t appreciate the full size unless you did a boat trip or helicopter trip, neither we had time for (nor the money for the latter). So we stopped off soon after approaching from the top left hand side to take a few snaps with the mountains in the background, where two of them were used for Mordar in the Lord of the Rings. Then continued on round the lake for about an hour until we reached one of the bays round the bottom towards the halfway mark.

Here we stopped for lunch looking across the lake with the sun shining across and waves lapping in. Yep waves, but, but, but it’s a lake, we know but there were. It was all quite surreal but pretty cool to see. Soon into our lunch one of those mahoosive motor homes turned up with a car on tow, now that’s something we haven’t seen before. Obviously we’ve seen cars towing caravans but not one being towed before. After lunch we drove on again up into the hill side away from the lake cutting through to the left hand side of Tongariro National Park, these contains the mountains mentioned earlier.

Hey now, here’s where the story really gets going, Highway 43 is known as the Forgotten World Highway. It was like something out of the Lost World, but no dinosaurs. Having said that it wouldn’t have surprised us if a T-Rex suddenly appeared, now that would have been really cool, well scary actually. The journey was so cool that it became an adventure activity in itself, thus we’re both going to cover our experiences on this highway, first off moi …

The first part of this highway is still thru the top of the Tongariro National Park. Whilst driving I found myself wondering away looking at the scenery at whether this part could have been in LOR. Screech!! Sharp corner! Doh! It can be quite distracting from driving. As we left the park behind the landscape became more and more Lost World with no one else around, no vehicles or buildings for miles and miles. Nor no petrol for 150km so we warned but we were ok having filled up already the night before. There was continuous rolling green hills, then some might say it became all Jurassic like as we winded thru the hill range. And I meaning non-stop winding, literally one bend after another for most of the journey, it almost got a bit dizzying after awhile.

Holy Cow Batman, I had found myself drifting away again this time lost in the forgotten world looking away at the Jurassic landscape, when BOOM! Out from nowhere a big lorry comes hurtling round a big bend towards us, well it felt like it. It was actually on the other side of the road. (Just realised saying that makes me Robin, doh!) It sure startled me anyway, wondering from where the hell that had come from and waking me up back to reality and to the road itself.

To make things even more challenging at several points along the road it goes down to one lane. This being either from having to cross narrow lane bridges (where we would see spectacular views of the gorges running thru) or due to landslipes on the road. The latter where it was always on the left hand side that we were driving on and often on the bends without any warning signs, marvellous! Scary but fun stuff! (There were warning signs thankfully for the one lane bridges showing which way had right of way). Apart from the odd lorry or tanker hurtling in the opposite direction we also came across the odd campervan but that was about it for most of the journey.

We even left NZ at one point as we entered the republic of Whangamomona. At the time this was a tad puzzling as we saw signs welcoming us in to the republic and on the way out saying goodbye. It was a very small town and if we were a bit more on the ball at the time we would have stopped to have a pint there and a muse about it. But we carried on instead rather bemused by it all. We later found out it was just the people of the town having a laugh and putting the town back on the map, after all it probably had been forgotten for awhile as its cast no shadow!

As the drive was a bit of an adventure in itself we decided to swap over, I think I may have turned Ali into a maniac speed devil driver from the luging, oh dear!! Possibly a slight exaggeration there but you get the gist hopefully. So anyway she’s electric and was raring to have a go. So it was my turn to be the nervous passenger on the champagne supernova. Not taking anything away from either of our driving as some might say we’re ok drivers (well we hope we are anyway). Its just that you’re not in control and the bends are coming up one after another fast and furious, almost like being in a rollercoaster without the big scary drops I guess. A few more holy cows were said is all I’ll say.

Chris has pretty much summed up the experience of driving on this road - it was mental. There were a few other crazy things we saw too. One of these was a farm with a wire fence outside covered in hundreds of cow skins in just about every different pattern you can imagine. It was totally random and a bit of a surprise. We also passed a ram sale and accompanying social event - I guess that this isn’t that crazy but it’s just that I’ve never really considered the social possibilities of ram buying before. I suppose that for rams, being sold is all about the subsequent social opportunities, but then their cause is not ours! We also went through a tunnel that the locals had stuck a sign over saying ”Hobbit Hole”. All in all it was a bonkers but extremely cool road.

(Back to moi). We did wonder at one point whether we would ever leave this highway as it was taking forever to cross it, it took 2 hrs to just travel 100km (approx 60 miles). However soon after musing away on this we caught sight of civilisation as we left the Forgotten World and drove into Stratford. This town as you may have deduced is named after Shakespeare, along with the roads & co. Here we came upon the wonder wall, the imposing looking Mount Egmont that was used to represent Mount Fiji (Japan) in the Last Samurai. From here thankfully it was only another 30 min drive to New Plymouth.


On Friday we had planned in the morning to go on the Last Samuri tour, (a reconstructed set of the Samuri village set in the farmlands that were used in Uruti (a nearby village). But we had left this too late, having being accustomed to booking stuff last minute, one advantage coming here late Spring/early Summer. However this time it backfired as the people running it are difficult to contact as we found out and as it turned out the Visitors Info centre also often have the same issue, so this was something we really should have booked earlier in the week, doh!

New Plymouth is one place where you can ski in the morning and then go surfing in the afternoon. But not being winter time we couldn’t experience this, one day we will somewhere. The surf at the nearby beaches didn’t look too good so we drove out onto the Surf Highway in the search for surf, cool!! This is a stretch of road along the west coast linking up several costal towns and providing access to numerous surf spots. At the next town Oakura the surf was ok and so we hired the surf gear at the local shop nearby. It was harder going than Raglan and so didn‘t go as well, but it’s a workout that beats going to the gym. Ali thinks less so, job‘s too hard were her thoughts. She’s still not totally sure about surfing, one minute she seems keen, the next less so.

Late afternoon it was time to drop back the surf gear and continue our journey along the Surf Highway to Mokoia at the other end, where we decided to crash for the night. I was expecting the highway to be a bit like the Great Ocean Rd where you would see the waves crashing as you drove along, but instead the road was several hundred meters away with farmland in between so you could only see the ocean in the distance. The only saving grace was being able to see Mount Egmont, as you can see this from a distance all along the Surf Highway as it circumferences round it, (takes about 1 hr 30 mins to drive). It seemed to us though that most of the surf spots are for the more experienced surfers as there were only 3 towns to hire from New Plymouth, Oakura and Opunake (a town about halfway along the highway) and often you have ask for permission from the farm owner to go across their farmlands to reach the surf. I think next time, if we ever come back, we’ll try the East Coast.

For those bored at work (or even at home) there are 9 references to song titles from the Oasis album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory“, have fun working them out.

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