Today was all about getting from New Plymouth to Turangi which we did along the forgotten world highway. We set off in the same direction as we did yesterday but unfortunately Mount Egmont was no more revealing than yesterday so we still couldn’t see the very top. We joined the highway at Stratford which is actually named after Shakespeare and all the roads are named after characters from his plays. We stopped at a number of viewpoints on route, all called saddles the first was Strathmore saddle from which we could see both Mt Egmont and the Central Plateau, it is official that the scenery has now reached the stage where we have run out of ways to describe it! The next one was Pohokur which was named after a prominent Maori chief and gives view of the valley, the Whangamomona Saddle which views of the forests and the final one was Tahora with views of the central North Island Mountains. We took a slight detour to visit Mt Damper Falls which are the second highest waterfalls on the North island they are about 20 minutes walk from the car park and are quite spectacular, they drop 85 metres through quite a narrow gap. We had our picnic lunch in the carpark at the falls as it was about 1pm then set off back to the forgotten world highway, on route back to the highway we met a farmer with his 4 dogs who we obviously trying to do something with his cows, but it really wasn’t obvious what, all that seemed to be happening was that the dogs chased the cows and seemed to scare the life out of them which caused the cows to run in every direction some went both ways up and down the forgotten highway and others ran up the road we were driving down, all very entertaining. Our next stop was Whangamomona which is a village that was one a frontier town with about 300 residents but now has a population of about 20. They declared themselves a republic in 1989 as they were moved to a different district and didn’t want to be! They have an Independence Day and and issue passports from the hotel. It’s a shame really as the town looks quite nice but very quiet. After this on the road was Moki Tunnel. It is 180 metres long and built in 1936 and it is very narrow but quite tall. The final couple of landmarks are the Tangarakau Gorge which is ‘unsealed’ which basically means no Tarmac this isn’t a very large section of the road and the final resting place of Joshua Morgan who was an early surveyor who dies in 1893 of peritonitis, both he and his wife are buried by the side of the river in a very peaceful place. Finally we arrived at the town of Taumarunui which is the eastern end of the forgotten highway, this is where the waters of the two rivers meet. The final part of the drive was through more stunning scenery and we got a great view of the snow capped mountains unfortunately slightly shrouded in cloud but hopefully this will clear tomorrow. So after 8 hours and 281 km we finally arrived at the apartment which is fantastic with great view of Lake Taupo.
