Karangahake Gorge and Mount Manganui
Salamander
Mon 29 Nov 2010 03:25
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Yet more Kiwi hospitality at Nicky's parents, Steve
and Vicky. They have a beautiful house in the countryside and Steve reassured us
that possums were a pest and very common. Needless to say we piled in the car.
Steve has a big plug in torch and we slowly drove past trees looking for possum
eyes. All we can say is we have seen more 'Red Book' endangered species than
possums in NZ as none turned up.
Our blogs from now will read like a non-stop ad for
NZ tourism, except for February when we are going to Australia. We have a great
AA book; "101 must do's for Kiwis" and are working our way through some of
them.
We stopped off at Karangahake Gorge which
is absolutely beautiful. The suspension bridges swing and sway unnervingly.
The site hasn't been turned into a theme park (yet) and you wander through 'at
your own risk'.
 There is an old gold mine where you wander down the
narrow old railway track, through tunnels with 'windows' running through
the middle of the gorge.
  The gold was in quartz and recovered by blasting and bodily with pick
and shovel. The sheer geography of the palce suggests what an awesome task this
was. Apparently the whole mountain range is still full of gold, but the
environmental lobby objected to leveling the range to extract it - good on them!
Our drive through from Paeroa to Waihi has a Lonely Planet description of 'best
short drive in NZ'.
Then we went to Mount Manganui. Mauao is the Maori name meaning 'caught in
the light of the day'. This hill is next to spectacular beaches and is a
rhyolite volcanic cone. A great little walk up and around in a beautiful
area.
 The day we left a pod of Orcas cruised through,
feeding on what's known as 'Orca Chocolate' here - stingrays. The newspaper
pictures were brilliant and we can only hope we get to see some.
Onwards after a nights stay at Boatshed Motel
Apartments (who even provided gluten free bread
for Caroline at no notice - unlike the company who took us to White Island who
'don't cater for dietary requirements') to White
Island.
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