Driving out 2012

Harking back to the summer that was, we spent the last day of 2012 driving from one side of the North Island to the other. Depending on which bit of it you are crossing, this can take either a few minutes, or most of a day.

Guess which one we were doing.

Going from the Waikato coast to Hawke's Bay is a longish haul straight through the middle of the island. that said we had good roads, perfect weather, active volcanoes and pretty waterfalls to look at, and even the odd moment of perfection in the back seat. 

SH30 from Te Kuiti to Taupo. One of my favourite bits of road that I don't drive on very often.

 The aforementioned moment of perfection.

 The white smudge at centre right is the active vent on Tongariro being active.

Waipunga Falls on the Napier Taupo road, another new discovery for us (having travelled this road all of once before). After revisiting Marokopa earlier in the day this was almost starting to feel like a waterfall tour at this point, which bizarrely, someone has actually done.

Our first sight of the east coast from the Napier Taupo highway. Moment of triumph tempered slightly by the reason we were stopped being to clean up a motion sickness related incident, after foolishly giving a toddler a book to read on a winding road.

Spending all day on the road, then setting up a tent at the collective friends of friends before putting the children to bed though doesn't exactly set you up for a night of New Year revelry though. Although long days that end with a promising change of scenery are usually worthwhile.

Free Treasure

One of the things about living in NZ is the ubiquitous green and yellow Department of Conservation markers you see around, particularly in rural areas, and how easy it is to ignore them, or think you'll come back to them some other time. Try not to; you might miss out on some cool stuff.

Near Marokopa there are three such signs, and on one of our days there we decided to check them out, knowing little or nothing about what they described. "We" being my wife and the old friend brothers we were in Marokopa with (seen here in best adventuring/don't-take-my-photo poses), brother's parents minding the kids for the afernoon:

The landscape around this part of the country is very limestone-y and prone to interesting erosion, as this appallingly lit photograph typifies. I love the view from the backyard of this house:

Our first stop was at the intriguingly named Natural Bridge at Maungapohue. For a few minutes you walk down an average little river canyon, like so:

Then suddenly you walk around a corner and are confronted with this, and involuntarily say "Wow" or words to that effect:

If you are wondering about scale, there is a person at the bottom of this shot. It's cathedralistic.

As to how it was formed, it's basically a cave with a collapsed roof. If you want to know more, click on this pic and read the info board :) :

And just a few steps out the other side and you wouldn't know it was there at all.

Also around the cave are littered eroded rock formations, including fun rocks for offspring to climb through, and intrepid explorers to conquer (note aforementioned DOC marker).

There are also rocks that look like they escaped from a Jim Henson movie and are about to wake up and start talking to you.

Moving on from the collapsed cave, a few minutes along the road at Piripri there is an intact one. This photographs about as well as you'd expect a large cave with only ambient lighting to photograph. On a hot and humid summer day descending into the cool gloom is incredibly refreshing.

And lastly a few minutes back along the road to Marokopa, and the last stop, are the magnificent Marokopa falls:

All of these things are pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but I love that these things are just freely available to explore and discover at your leisure. I knew nothing about these three things until we stumbled across them, and (taxes notwithstanding), no-one charged us an entry fee to go and look at them, or made us take a tour. We could just take it in on our own terms and in our own time.

Including family selfies when we took the children to see the sights on our way to our second camping destination the next day:

 I am smiling, it's just hard to concentrate on taking the photo as well :).

Victorian Photo Challenge

I'm heading over the ditch to Melbourne next weekend, and in the vein of the previous photo challenges I've tried, I thought for fun I'd revive the concept and ask for a hit list of things to photograph while I'm over there. Things must be readily visible, or not going to get me arrested by photographing them.

So, if you are reading, challenge away, and I'll post the results when I get back.

Marokopa

January and February go by so fast. We ended 2012 by hitting the road for our annual summer camping trip, starting at Marokopa on the Waikato coast. We'd been there a while ago pre-children, and it wasn't a hugely long drive, even allowing for Marokopa being a long way from anywhere, but two under fives in the back have a habit of drawing the journey out. They compensated by cuting the place up wherever we stopped. Like Taihape:

And Taumaranui (yes my daughter is picnicking on the footpath. That's where she decided the party was at):

It was getting to late afternoon by the time we arrived at Marokopa, and started putting the tent up in 30+ degree heat.

 That done we had a wee explore. This is pretty much it, and I like that:

After tea we retired to the cabin/unexpectedly plush guest house our friends (whose idea it was to go here in the first place) were staying at to hang out and admire the view:

Marokopa is all about the fishing, and this was proved when the campground manager wandered over to give us one of the two crayfish he'd caught that day. Cooked and ready to eat and completely free of charge. I didn't ask how big the one he kept for himself was.

As I said the essence of Marokopa is fishing. It's at the end of the road and there isn't much else to do there. It is also the quietest camping ground we have ever stayed in (apart from the ubiquitous quad bikes used to travel the beach) , since most occupants are getting up pre-dawn to catch the morning tide. So the next morning we joined our friends on the black sand beach to see what could be caught.

Nothing as it turned out. The crayfish would have to do (disappointing, I know). Charlotte did find a starfish in a tree back at the campground though, because that is where you would expect to find them of course.

When not finding sea creatures in weird places Charlotte practiced her horse whispering skills.

And Sophie practiced her photobombing skills:

And once they were in bed I practiced my handheld moonlight river photography skills.

Instant Rapids

First you need to find a rocky watercourse downstream from the sluice gates of a hydro-electric power station reservoir.
Then, just

add

water...

And you're away:

The Aratiatia Rapids on the Waikato River north of Lake Taupo are one of my favourite things. They are dry most of the time, but several times a day the sluice gates used to control the reservoir level are opened and the rapids run again. The gates open for half an hour on each occasion, with the rapids fully developing in less than ten minutes. Once the gates close they are mostly dry again after a quarter of an hour. I've seen them many times and the spectacle of watching them fill, run and empty hasn't gotten old yet. Some blurb about the whys and hows of the rapids is here, with a cool 1960's geological and general description of them and nearby Huka Falls here.

Just downstream of the gates there is a pool about 50 metres across that acts as a sort of header for the rapids themselves. To give an idea of scale, inside the red box at centre left of this pic is a supermarket shopping trolley (which isn't visible at the resolution of this copy, but trust me its there on the hi-res version):

I don't know how it got there either, but there are also a few traffic cones scattered around the upper reaches as well as other stuff people have tested the rapids with. Anyway, a few minutes after the gates open it looks like this:

Another part of the same pool:

Making the rapids cooler is that they are totally free to view, you just have to know how to get there. There are three separate vantage points to watch from, each with a different perspective worth checking out (during our stay last week, we went to the rapids three times to go to each lookout. And because Charlotte enjoyed seeing the 'water falling out'). It is only a very short detour from SH1 if you are passing by and looking for something more interesting than the usual rest-stops to take a break. Recommended for residents and tourists alike :)

And because movies sometimes convey things better than stills, here are some appropriate youtube vids I found:

Filling up

Drawing down

And someone running the rapids in a kayak....

Just your average everyday camping ground

This is our tent and campsite in Taupo on Monday evening last week. Pretty normal looking.
But looking at the neighbours (you can just see our blue car poking out from behind the 4x4), reveals an unusual concentration of cars and tents spread across three sites:

Oh, and a drag racer.

Turns out a version of the West Family was encamped next door, in the form of a 10 strong family based racing team. The young'uns amongst them partied like it was 1999 for the two nights they were there next to us (we lent them a tent post to help prop up their communal awning. In return I was offered a beer. Or a bourbon and cola), which is great if you are in the mood, and I get their enthusiasm having done the same thing (if not quite so noisily) at their age. If you aren't in the mood though, tents are rubbish sound insulators, especially when the party is only a few meters away, and you have a two-year old who you not only want to keep asleep, but will get up and then wake you up at 7am no matter what.

Things culminated around midnight when one of them tripped over the recycling bin full of empty bottles and cans, and then fell on to his own tent, which was funny as hell apparently, but caused the dad of the party (and presumably the head man in charge) to get up out of his tent and do some law laying down of the late night noise in public and consideration for other campers kind, which saved us the trouble of doing the same thing. They left the next day and we got three further nights of peace and quiet after dark.

At the other end of our row in contrast we had the F__king Europeans (french and german going by the accents. They spoke in english to each other). After putting on a show with the light poi at dusk, they put on a show of another kind in the not quite dark, by getting all frisky on it and not quite discreetly shagging on the bonnet of one of their cars (to the accompaniment of some pretty average dance music from one of the car stereos) technically in the shadows, but plainly visible to any passerby (and they were next to an access way, so there were many of those) who glanced their way for more than half a second. Their activities were described in great detail by the aforementioned young'uns next door, one or two of whom made not so subtle reconnaissances to check that they really were seeing in silhouette what they thought they were seeing.

They left before dawn, presumably wanting to leave the site with a bang (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). Wednesday the 5th saw the end of the New Years public holidays, so the camp quitened down a bit after all that early excitement as people went home to go back to work.