A tour of Taranaki, torrential Tongarriro and onto Taupo

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Back on the road heading north we targeted the nicely cone shaped Taranaki volcano near New Plymouth, otherwise known as Mt. Egmont. It last erupted 150 years ago and is classed as dormant not extinct, but as we wound our way around it in a clockwise direction it looked cool but didn’t show any signs of life. Keen to get to the central plateau and the Tongariro National Park whilst we had a rare patch of reasonable weather we turned inland and started east on the ‘Forgotten highway’ a motorway according to the abominable Ezy mapbook, but in reality a narrow and very wiggly road that was unsealed at times. We stopped for the night by the side of the road after 20 or 30km’s with great views back to Taranaki, but in hindsight not enough privacy as the passing locals took delight in honking their horns as we tried to get to sleep and shouting ‘cock-a-doodle-do’ as they drove past in the morning - they obviously don’t get out much around here!

As we drew closer to the centre of the island we saw some reasonable views of the three main volcanoes Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngaurahoe that dominate the area, but the weather was definitely turning sour again. There has been some pretty spectacular activity around these parts with Ruapehu rated as one of the world’s most active volcanoes. The last big eruption was back in 1995/96 when Ruapehu blew its top and there are always hundreds of small earthquakes everyday. Since then there have been smaller eruptions (2006, 2007) and lahar’s (mud flows) that are also potentially lethal. We wanted to do a day walk known as the Tongariro Crossing, which passes between the peaks, alongside volcanic lakes from one side of the park to the other, but unfortunately the weather was getting wetter and windier all the time. This was horribly reminiscent of my last visit here when I hardly saw a thing walking for 7 hours in horizontal driving rain and mist, so we made do with looking at the displays in National Park visitors centre. Having just checked on the web I’ve found out that a 22 year old teacher had her leg crushed only 2 days ago (Sept 25th 2007) when a rock came through the roof of the hut she was in during a ’minor’ eruption... If this kind of thing gets you going then check out www.geonet.org/nz and you can look at earthquake activity, eruptions and all sorts of other cool stuff like volcano-cams from the safety of your own home!

With another failure to get up in the mountains and do some decent walks, the inclement weather was starting to get to us a bit, but we tried to be positive and look for low level alternatives, starting with the Okupata Caves 11km down a muddy track (we like those). There we spent a while poking our heads down dark holes that looked like they could flood or collapse at any minute, quickly deciding to leave that to the professional caving lunatics and drove a little further on, camping up in the middle of nowhere and doing a quick walk through the bush to make us feel like we had stretched our legs a bit before settling down for the night.

The next morning we wound our way back to the main road and onto the Waikato Falls just south of Taupo. These were actually quite impressive and included a steep sided gorge of carved rocks that, after a lot of exploring we finally managed to get quite close to. Then we swung by the rather forgettable Pillars of Hercules, before heading onto Taupo to get a proper campsite for the night, stopping for ‘threesies’ at Motutere on the way.

The next day in town we blogged, spent more time sorting out our Galapagos trip which was turning into a fulltime job and went to the doctors to see about my never ending wrist injury that physio earlier in Blenheim had failed to fix. Latest prognosis being that the ligament holding a small bone in my wrist has detached itself and that I will need keyhole surgery to have it removed, not possible until I get back to the UK and in the meantime it will hurt.. great!!

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