How Beautiful New Zealand Is.

Imagine, for years I had driven the well traveled road from Auckland to Palmerston North and return.  Most often, I'd not be seeing the scenery with all eyes well and truly stuck on the road.  In recent years, I have been driven between Palmy and Taupo with my brother, and of late with camera in tow.  And yesterday we did the round trip again and I was not only snapping away, but I also had the chance to see how green and wonderfully diverse our scenery is, and why many overseas visitors marvel at our natural beauty.

These natural beauties included vast green farmland and trees (as in first photo), the vast openness of the Desert Road, the natural diversity of native forests towards Turangi, the drive around vast Lake Taupo, and then Taupo itself.  Now for me, as an amateur vulcanologist and geophysicist, the whole Central Plateau is a great place to actually see in all it's glory.  From the giant behemoth that is Ruapehu, to the elegant Ngaurahoe, and on to lazy wallowing Tongariro, and finally to the largest crater lake in the world, Lake Taupo.  Ruapehu and Ngaurahoe were enshrouded in cloud, but not hard to see that snowfall had been recent and heavy.  Even Tongariro had a dusting.

But the bad weather that dogged our drive over the Desert Road (Pic to right) deserted us when we got to Turangi and there was a great scene of the lake, seemingly placid, stretching out to the horizon.  As I have said, I had traveled this road many times, and this time I was seeing the scenery for the very first time, and I was seeing little towns for what they were, little towns and not 70Kmp signs.  The Caravan Park at Motuapa, the fisherman in streams catching trout, the precarious cliff faces waiting to spill large boulders in an earthquake onto an unsuspecting driver, the huge tracts of land where Pine was being grown for milling, and many more things.

But the jewel of the trip had to be the lake.  Right from where we picked it up at Turangi through to the Taupo junction, back to a quick wind surf at a bay in Taupo, and the journey back, the Lady was in sparkling form.  The wind was a southerly at about 10 knots and rather chilly (still snowing on the High Plateau) but my brother managed to don wet suit, kick off the rubber booties, wrap up in a jacket and climb aboard his brand new secondhand windsurfer.  He hadn't been on a borad for five years and his first trip out netted an unceremonious dunking, his first and last.

Now me and my brother go back when it comes to windsurfing.  We were a part of the original windsurfing club of Manawatu back in 1982, both of us using heavy regatta boards.  Once again we'd travel the country from Lake Horowhenua, to Duddings Lake, to the Manawatu and Wanganui Rivers and up to Oakura Beach eventually (and with new wave jumping boards).  I sold my gear in 1985 after I wasn't allowed to travel with it on the ships, but harping back to those early days, I have very little memory of the sights I saw as we drove around the country chasing the wind.

But one of the real beauties we saw yesterday, was this young lady shedding her clothing and going for a dip in the freezing waters of the Lake.  My brother (who'd not long been in that water) reckoned the temp as about 5ºC in the water and the wind chill factor turned the 10ºC air temp to about 6ºC.  We both egged her on in her swimming endeavours, tooting the horn and waving madly, lol.  We surmised that she was Scandinavian and the sun was just too tempting, and the water.  Invigorated, we returned to Palmerston North, being snowed on on the Desert Road, heavy rain from Waiouru through to Hunterville, and fine weather all the way home.

The camera remained silent for most of that return trip with the exception of this rridiculous shot of why cyclists get bowled over on the open road.  It rips my knickers to know that all cyclists, unless in race mode, are aware they are supposed to be a minimum of two abreast on the road.  These ones, snapped in Feilding were definitely causing a road hazard..