An early morning dip in the spa pools starts the day nicely. But what was intended to be a quick half-an-hour turns into over an hour as we get chatting to two English couples. One couple from Enfield have left their children in charge at home and in an ironic twist on the usual gap-year syndrome have taken three months out to travel NZ and Australia. The other couple from Plymouth are doing a similar trip through NZ and Oz. So our intended early start to Wellington is delayed and we don’t get away until around10am. We take a break to view the stunning Huka Falls. It’s here that New Zealand’s longest river, the Waikato, is forced through a narrow gorge to produce a fearsome torrent of extraordinarily blue water and white foam surging at a rate of 60 litres a second over a 10 metre drop into a swirling pool below. It’s possible to see the falls from several vantage points on both sides of the river as well as walk along the edge of the unfenced gorge as the water rushes by a few feet below – something unimaginable in the UK!
From Huka Falls we make our way on Highway 1 to Wellington a journey of about 400km which is going to take us the rest of the day. This takes across the central plateau, which is far from flat – it is home to the three massive peaks of Tongariro, Ruapehu and Ngaurunhoe. The descent down to Taupo provides a spectacular view of this vast water-filled crater and New Zealand’s largest lake. The road runs along the edge of the east shore of the lake. We are seeing more sheep now and the number of butterflies flitting in the verges and across the road is quite amazing. South of Tongariro National Park the highway runs for 56km through the inappropriately named Rangipo Desert, which isn’t actually a desert, but a windswept and bleak brown grassland almost devoid of trees. Part of the road is subject to closure in bad weather which begs the question how traffic get down south when the main north/south highway is out of operation. At Wairouru we pass the perplexingly named Angkor Wat Bakery and Coffee Shop which seems to be a favourite with the biker community. We arrive in Wellington in the late afternoon. Tonight we ‘treat’ ourselves to a cabin – we have an early start tomorrow, the ferry leaves at 8.30am and Wellington is windy and damp.