TAUPO - WANGANUI

The drive from Auckland to Taupo was an exercise in stress management. There were only a few face-offs with other vehicles in the same lane, but time and distance were in my favor and nobody died. I’m sure I drew plenty of, “WTF” looks but my attention was on mirrors and staying in the left lane. As it turned out, Taupo was an upscale, tourism center; all about well healed people, big boats and lake front property. The lake was beautiful as I left town. It took an hour to get it out of my mirror, an indication of its size. Shortly, the divided highway devolved into a two-lane blacktop with yellow stripe, no passing zones; no problem. I drove better than I expected. As the road got more hills and curves, traffic slowed down and oncoming traffic was less threatening than earlier. Modeling others, I took some courage. 

We went through areas that had been clear-cut with not a shred of green in sight. Logging trucks passed in both directions, with and without loads. Most notably, large tracts had been replanted in evenly spaced rows, several feet tall and well established. Whole mountain sides of mature trees were arrayed in herringbone patterns where row cropped tree tops were aligned with great precision. Other than length of growing season and size of the plants, it’s really not much different than farming peanuts in Georgia. But what would the world be like without pine boards and saw dust? I picked up a couple of Austrian hikers. Cedric and Benedict were on a last fling before starting college in the fall. They had to do a year of public service after high school and were three weeks into a three month sabbatical. Cedric’s English was pretty good; Benedict said, “Yaa, yaa” a lot and depended on universal laughter. They were both smallish and skinny. How they trek those huge back packs, I don’t know. I let them out in a small town to get groceries and went on my way.

Off the main line, GPS sent us off to the southwest on a road that narrowed and then narrowed even more as it went. Ups and downs, curves all got steeper and tighter; drop offs were almost vertical. Oncoming traffic almost nonexistent but when they did show, I hugged the left edge and we passed without incident. It was sheep country and it was slow going. The mountain sides were mostly bare, with little foot paths running horizontally. Sheep walk even the steepest face, imprint a path only a few inches wide and eat as far as they can reach, on the high side. When they get to a turning point, they circle back at the next level up. After many generations of sheep eating on the same grid, they looked like geological formations rather than foot trails. 

My rental car is an underpowered, high rpm Mazda hatchback that sounds like a leaky muffler. All the cars here sound like they have leaky mufflers and I suspect it’s something to do with emissions standards or the lack of. We pulled into Wanganui at about 4:00 p.m. I'd comment on the name, Wanganui but then I'd have to say something about Climax, Michigan and Peculiar, Missouri. In the end there's a story there, just not the one I'm working on. It’s just a short ride to the coast and the Tasman Sea. I want to see it before turning east.