After lazy start and a Burger King breakfast (or brunch actually as many now don’t do breakfasts due to egg shortage and price increase since Covid), we headed off to Whakapapa and Iwikau village to take Sky Waka up to the ski slopes at 2080metres. Of course the journey to get to villages took us through a several distinctly different landscapes including Alpine, forests, plains and an almost dry swamp ( think of the dead marshes from LOTR) environment. As we got closer to the turn off to Whakapapa, the landscape became a vast rocky blasted moonscape, that could be liked to some areas of the Granite belt in Queensland but in extreme with remains of lava flows as far as the eye can see. We could almost see the LOTR hobbit characters climbing up through the blasted environment of Mordor from the books and movies.
At the village of Whakapapa we saw the permanently closed Chateau Tongariro.
Closed due to compulsory earthquake reinforcing requirements needed. Very costly and no one willing to pay the bill even though it is supposedly heritage listed.
After visiting the excellent Whakapapa iSite, we drove on to Iwakau village where the Sky Waka service takes you on a journey up the northern face of Mt Ruapehu to 2020m, on the Sky Waka gondola. Today the mountain was partially cloudy, but it appeared that weather would only get worse during the rest of the week, so took the trip up. The journey up was enjoyable with clouds covering the last quarter up the Mt Ruapehu.
We explored around the cafe taking in the landscape, spying the occasional patch of snow through the light cloud. After lunch, the sun burnt through some of the clouds to present to us a truly magnificent landscape.
We headed back to Turangi to charge up our phones and cameras before heading out to Taupo and Dinner. We stopped along the way to see the lake and visit places of interest sign posted along the way. Once in Taupo we parked along the beach front, took photos and looked around and found food at the Jolly good fellow bar and restaurant . We greatly enjoyed the meal and some cider called Magners Irish cider. Melissa got in some great sunset photos (9ish at night) and then we drove home to our motel. Tonight a local cat played on our front perch, and looks remarkably like Charlotte’s Rick, right down to the mannerisms.
A great day. 😃
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