8June06 To New Plymouth

8June06 Thursday

Today we drove from Taupo down Hwy 1 along the east side of Lake Taupo down to Turanga at the south end of the lake.  This was reverse direction to the two times that we have driven this route previously heading north.  We wanted to go over to Mt. Taranaki and New Plymouth on the west coast.  We took Hwy 43 which appeared to be a relatively docile route on the map but our curiosity was aroused by a sign saying that it was “The Forgotten World Highway” and no fuel for 150 km when we started down it.  I told Joan that it should be an interesting ride.

 

It turned out to be very interesting indeed.  I had no need for gears 5 and 6 on this road as we excercised 2,3,and 4 a lot.  It had hairpin turns where you could see your tail lights going around the corners.  It also had the most vertical sheep pastures of any place we have been in New Zealand.  The hills or mountains were the beautiful vibrant green with fine lawn appearance that we have seen before but what a display it was today.  The 150 km took most of the day and I can’t say that I would ever take this road again.  I counted 11 one lane bridges over the stretch and some one way sealed portion of the road and in general the two lanes were pretty narrow.  Then there was the stretch of about 15 km or so through a gorge that was unsealed and only one lane.  We won’t tell KEA about that one.  Then there was the tunnel named the “Hobbit Hole” that looked very hand carved with the sign that said 4.5 meter clearance at the entrance.  Let’s see, how high did KEA say this campervan was?  Well we kind of sucked in our collective breaths as if this would make it smaller and we made it through without leaving any paint or pieces of fiberglass along the sides.

 

The other interesting thing was when we would see a sign saying so and so’s saddle ahead.  There was about 5 or 6 of these and we soon learned that it meant a lot of steep hairpin turns at about 15 km/hr ahead going up and then the same in reverse going down the other side.  We started to groan when we saw these.

 

Well we did make it to New Plymouth late in the afternoon and in a perverted sense we did enjoy the drive on the “Forgotten World Highway”.  I decided that they call it this because after getting through it you want to forget about it but believe me we won’t.

 

As we got close to Mt. Taranaki we couldn’t see much of it because of cloud cover but as we got close to New Plymouth we did see the top of it above the clouds.  It could be a twin to Mt. Fiji I believe.  We eventually found the Top 10 Holiday Park after being lost for a while in town and settled in for the night.  We hope for a clear day tomorrow so that we can see more of the mountain.  If it’s not we probably will head on north towards Auckland and back to the northland area.