Sometimes the best places are where you least expect them!

The next morning, we traveled further down the lakefront and past the town of Turangi toward Lake Rotopounamu. We could see Mounts Tongariro and Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom) in the distance, capped with snow. We decided to walk and geocache the 2-hour track around the lake. Most of the hike was in the bush, with only an occasional glimpse of the lake. We noticed many stoat* traps placed near the trail.

(*So what’s a stoat, you ask! It’s a relative of a weasel, sometimes called an ermine. They were introduced by the Europeans and have become very prolific and a huge nuisance and are endangering native ground-nesting and flightless birds of New Zealand. Why were they brought here to New Zealand? To control the rabbit population that was previously brought to New Zealand, by Europeans, for food and hunting. But rabbits multiplied like… and the farmers complained. So the answer was to bring in stoats to control the rabbits.)

We decided to navigate our way to Waikato Falls. It was near a power plant, so this diminished the enjoyment, but we were the only ones there. We drove a few kilometers further to Treetrunk Gorge. Now this was entirely worth the drive!

If you blink, you’d probably pass over the small bridge and never notice anything. You have to know to stop and look around. There were a couple of handmade crosses at the bridge, and they had obviously been there for a while. When you stand on the bridge and look down, a torrent of water is passing through a deep crevasse. Fred and I walked for a bit on a path on the downward side of the river. It came to an abrupt end and there were trees right on the edge of a long drop-off. We obviously had detoured from the path that our faithful NZ Frenzy guide had described.

We headed back to the road and went on the small path on the other side. There was a time or two you had to hang onto tree roots and lower yourself down. Then you scrambled to the banks of the river, the rocks were a volcanic gray. Moss along the edge of the river cascaded over the rocks and you could see where the water suddenly dropped into the chasm. We sat on the rocks for some time just enjoying this scene that seemed like something out of a movie set. And yet, we were the only ones there.

Having to force ourselves back to reality, we left this beautiful spot and drove north towards Otorohanga. We did a bit of geocaching along the way, had some awesome views of the lake, wandered into a roadside park, and found our way to Kiwi Campground, which overlooked a huge grassy area and was located next to the Kiwi House. I had prepaid the powered site at Kiwi Campground, but no one ever came by to check. A note was on the caretaker’s booth that stated we should check in at the Kiwi House. It was already closed for the day, so we plugged in, took showers and settled in for the night.

The Adventure Continues>>>