We left Cook’s Beach on a perfect weather day so took advantage by making some stops along our road trip. First one was at a macadamia orchard with great views of the bay.
At our lunch stop we had a little debate. Rob thought that the table beside the car would be adequate:
I was stating the case for lunch with a view, which also included a 6 minute hike straight up a series of staircases. I’m taking a poll: which spot would you pick?
Once we had gone up it seemed crazy not to hike up another 7 minutes for the best views! This is what poor RobO has to deal with.
Our stay for the next few nights was on a horse farm just outside of Te Aroha. We really enjoyed getting to know our new horsey friends.
NZ has a series of Great Rides, which are multi-day cycling journeys. We rented bikes and did 1 day of the Hauraki trail which took us through farmland, a 1.1km tunnel, bridges, and rainforest.
We locked the bikes and explored the Karangahake Gorge which included the Windows Hike, a freaky hike through old, dark gold mining tunnels where the only light was from ‘windows’ to the gorge.
We loved our lunch stop at a waterfall.
The next day RobO did some work on his upcoming musical (shameless plug for 9 to 5, showing in Medicine Hat late April), while I decided to hike up the Te Aroha mountain. The trail map listed it as ‘difficult’ but I was quite cavalier about how hard it could be. I had some quivering legs by the time I met Rob at a coffee shop!
Te Aroha has horse races 7 times per year and one happened to be during our stay. Our hosts told us that the races started at noon so we were there at quarter to, only to realize that the first one was at 2:01. No biggie – we watched the set up of all of the components and settled into our front row seats.
We watched a couple of races and we didn’t officially bet, but I won a 12 minute massage from RobO – 4 minutes per race that my chosen horse edged out his. But then we saw a horse get injured and have to be hauled into a horse ambulance, which put a damper on our excitement. So that was enough time at the races for us.
We drove further south to a pretty lakeside town called Taupo. One of the things that has been on the bucket list for a long time is to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is a world heritage site and is heralded as New Zealand’s best day hike. It is a point to point hike so we were up early to drive to the end, park our car, and ride the shuttle to the start. I loved that the hike goes through 4 different types of landscape over it’s 20km route.
The first section felt like we were walking on another planet and included great views of Mount Tongariro, which any Lord of the Rings geeks out there would recognize as Mordor’s Mt. Doom.
As we hiked up and over the red crater we had our first glimpses of the jewel coloured alpine lakes.
On the way to our lunch spot at the blue lake the views looking back took our breath away.
The next section showed classic views over expansive fields and lakes with the odd steaming hot spring.
Finally we reached the only shaded area, the final 4km descent through the rainforest. By that point it was a bit of a slog, so there’s only 1 picture to prove how pretty it actually was. This hike definitely exceeded my expectations and Rob rated it as one of his top 3 favourite hikes!
After long showers, we refueled at BurgerFuel, an NZ gourmet burger chain. They give out a ‘doofer’ which is a little cardboard burger holder that contains all of your fixings while you chow down. We were skeptical at the start but RobO fully endorses it’s usefulness. I was too tired to notice that it was upside down!
We have a few more days of adventure on the north island. Can’t wait!
WOW!!! I wanna go to NZ!!!!! 😍