New Plymouth to Taupo

Ten minutes outside of New Plymouth and the countryside again became quite mountainous where we passed lakes, rivers, fields of sheep and cows etc. So I did not take many photos as you can have too many pictures of the same old thing.

New Plymouth is located next to the extinct Volcano named ‘Taranaki’ or ‘Egmont’ which is 2518 metres high. They have a saying here that ‘If you can see the Volcano then it will rain soon and if you cannot see it then it must be raining.’ Good Logic??.

Anyway we had about 180 miles to drive today, more than usual, to get to Taupo where we have both been before. I must mention at this point that there is an awful lot of road works going on in this country. Today was a prime example where the main route was dug up almost to the core of the earth, then a mountainside removed as hardcore then chucked in followed by lots of other stuff and then a nice sticky layer of tarmac and then covered by tons of stones. The finished result is a very bumpy road surface with lots of stones that fly all over the place when you drive over it and tarmac sticking to the underside of the car. I believe the Romans could do a better job but I know the French would.

We stopped in a little village for a quick lunch and arrived in Taupo mid afternoon. This place is buzzing at the moment as on Saturday 1^st March there is the ‘Ironman’ Competition with about 2500 competitors who will swim 2.4 miles across the lake, cycle 112 miles and then run 26.2 miles. Just a pleasant day out really.

We had dinner in the garden of the Motel and then headed down town to look around. All of the shops were closed and the restaurants were just starting to get busy as the sun shone down.

We decided to have an early night as we know that some of the competitors are staying at our Motel and will be in the forecourt at 0530 no doubt with banging of car doors etc. What beats me is that if they can do all the swimming, cycling and running for miles on end why they cannot walk 500 metres to the start without getting in a car.

Taupo town has grown considerably since we were last here and when walking around the harbour we saw a boat managed by ‘Chris Jolly’ who managed the boat when I first visited here in 1980 ish with a Cathay Pacific Airways organised trip for Hong Kong freight forwarders.

The above photo shows the surprise winner of 'Ironman 2008'

Those were the days!!! And so to bed.