![]() ![]() Whenever we've been able to we've planned our itinerary around staying at Department of Conservation (DOC) camps and, of those we stay in, the Trounson Kauri Park's facilities surpasses them all. In this country, it's like searching for flies in the outback. As we drive back through Auckland, on our way north, we play endless rounds of Rock Scissors Paper and I Spy, and we introduce games where we try to be the first to identify a grey horse or a dairy cow or a camper van. We camp on private land that slopes down to a rocky inlet and, as the sky fills with stars for the first time in days, Finn and I battle rogue penguins and jokers in a make-believe game of Batman and Robin. Glorious sunlight warms each bay and cove and sleepy fishing communities spring to life. From that point on, the sea's temperament inside the Bay of Plenty is like ying to the yang we've witnessed along the Pacific coast. A landslide blocks the gravel track to the East Cape lighthouse and it's not until we reach Hick's Bay that the sun begins to shine. Waves pound storm-battered bays littered with driftwood and seaside hamlets appear deserted as residents hole up inside their homes. Only a few days earlier rain, causing widespread flooding, had lashed this coastline, and we see the damage and debris as we pass. Rain continues the following day as we take the coastal road towards East Cape, New Zealand's most easterly point. Sunbursts and polygons and spheres still decorate the building exteriors fronting Tennyson and Emerson streets, and, today, Napier is perhaps the world's best preserved and uniform example of design from that period. ![]() Napier was levelled by an earthquake in 1931 and the art deco architecture that rose from the rubble casts us back to a time before we were born. We spend the remainder of a rain-soaked afternoon feeling like we've stumbled on to a movie set. The vines were first planted in 1851 and Michelle and I sample from an extensive range inside an elevated tasting room overlooking hectares of vines. As so often happened, clerics were the original lushes and it was they who started the country's first winery in Napier's suburban fringe.įor more than 100 years, until 1991, Mission Estate operated as a Marist Brothers seminary, with their legacy being the production of some of the finest red and white varietals in the country. Hawke's Bay was New Zealand's pioneering wine region and today a staggering 172 vineyards can be found within a 50-kilometre radius of Napier and its twin city, Hastings. Further on, we skirt Lake Taupo before the road doglegs past gushing waterfalls and through luxuriant grazing pasture towards Hawke's Bay. The road immediately to the east of the national park crosses the Rangipo Desert, an austere volcanic plain plagued by bitingly cold winds and porous soils. ![]() Michelle points out the distinctive conical form of Mount Taranaki, more than 100 kilometres to the west. The lower slopes of the three mountains protected within the national park boundaries – Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro – are all visible, though cloud blankets each of their peaks. The seven-kilometre return hike rises and dips until it reaches a boulder-ringed pool at the foot of a roaring cascade that tips over the edge of a solidified lava flow. Finn has finally drifted off.Īfter breakfast the next morning, we drive to a trail head to Taranaki Falls. It is only after repeated attempts to silence him that we decide to ignore him and an hour passes before we realise how quiet it has become inside the van. He's less eager to sleep though and spends the next hour talking and singing to himself and peering down at us, wondering aloud why we aren't sleeping too. And yet, with the golden rays of the late afternoon sun dappling its naked flanks, it is starkly beautiful.Īfter we've eaten, Finn is eager to try out his bed and he bounds up before I have a chance to fully extend the mattress. Its slopes are bare and isolated, and a chill wind whistles through the stunted vegetation surrounding the camp. Even though its summit lies hidden beneath a veil of clouds, it exudes menace. It is in this national park where film director Peter Jackson set the mythical kingdom of Mordor in his cinematic Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it was into Mount Ngauruhoe – as Mount Doom – that the hobbit Frodo Baggins cast the treacherous ring.Īs I step out from behind the wheel of the van to stretch my legs for the first time since we'd lunched just south of Hamilton, I can immediately see how Jackson chose it above others as the fiery cauldron from which the ring was forged. ![]() Many hours later, I pull into a motor home bay at the Department of Conservation's (DOC) Mangahuia camp ground, near the winter ski centre of Whakapapa. "Ahhh…" she says, thinking, "about as long as it takes to drive from our place to Uncle Dennis' farm."įinn pauses. ![]()
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