Day 16 and 17 Back to the North Island and Auckland

We left Blenhiem at 8 to make sure we were early for the ferry at 10. There was New Zealand's H.O.G. rally in Wellinton and a lot of Harley riders from the South Island we going across for the rally. We tied down on the ferry with about 20 Harley guys. We visited a little about the rally. I should have planned to be there for it, but I don't think David could have handled that much Harley stuff. Our crossing was rougher than our south bound crossing but not too bad. It was a warm sunny day as we headed north from Wellington. It took awhile for the traffic to clear out but we were soon rolling up SH 1 at 110 klicks per. It was a nice day and the traffic was quite light. We also ran into a couple of guys riding old Indians. They were having their own rally in Hamilton.

We were headed toward Lake Taupo where we had a resv. at the Rainbow Motel at the south end of the lake, in the thermal village of Tokaanu. We passed Tongariro National Park again, this time to the east side. We had even closer views of the centerpiece Mount Ruapehu, than on our previous pass to the south. A fault line runs through the center of the country so the expectation of a potential eruption or earthquake is always present. Like us with hurricanes. When we turned off to go to Tokaanu, a guy who had been following David alerted him to the fact something had fallen out of his saddlebag. another good Kiwi followed up with the item, David's laptop. Sorry he lost it's use, but happy he has insurance, David handled it well, thankful he got it back and, hopeful he can recover his photos from the hard drive. It fired up but the screen was badly busted up, so there was no way to tell if the hard drive is damaged.

We got to the Rainbow Motel which turned out to be a modest, retro motel, with mineral baths. We met the owner Bob Lambert who showed us to our 2 bedroom apt. furnished in a fifties motif. Bob said he has worked hard to keep the fifties theme but it is hard to find the furnishings anymore.

We took a good hike through the small thermal village of Tokaanu past a thermal resort, a hotel, a petrol station and 2 little churches down to the marina. We met some locals fishing and found out a little about the lake, NZ largest. We were told this is the trout fishing capital of the world. Both Brown and Rainbow trout run the lake and the streams feeding it.

The entire area is thermal with steam rising out of ponds, vents in people's yards and high on the mountain sides. It make me feel very close to the center of the earth. We had dinner where Bob suggested, unfortunately the food was only mediocre.

We went back and enjoyed a mineral soak in one of the Rainbow's open air hot pools. The stars were out so we hoped we would arise to clear skies instead of the rain clouds that were forecast.

But alas, when we awoke the next morning it had rained and you could tell there was more on the way. We donned our rain gear telling ourselves we were lucky because the rain was steady but light and it wasn't cold. We rode SH 41 and SH 39 which were great roads and would have been fun without a steady downpour. We had planned to stay our last night on the Cormandel Penisula but the forecast of rain all day all over the country changed our mind. When we stopped for breakfast about 2 hours into our ride I cancelled and we headed toward Auckland. It never got cold but the rain got heavy, it got windy, and the traffic got heavier and heavier. We didn't want to stop until we found a place we could stay. Even on the main hwy. SH 1, there are not motels at every exit like the U.S. , so we were happy when we reached the exit for the airport south of Auckland certain we would be able to find lodging.

We got lucky, very lucky, not only did we find a nice motel, near a shopping mall, with restaurants, but we found some more outstanding Kiwis. Neil and Gaynor Barker own the Manukau Motor Lodge on the south side of Auckland and welcomed us graciously. They are absentee owners most of the time but we were fortunate enough to be there when they were. Neil helped us do our laundry and get everything dry (a lot) even feeding the dryers money when they stopped. You don't expect this kind of hospitality at 36 unit hotel, but like so much in New Zealand the unexpected is usually good. Gaynor pointed us to the Republic a trendy restaurant in the mall. It was hip and upscale with American music videos playing on large screen TVs. David had some pizza and I had the Lamb Rump, without question the tastiest lamb dish I've ever had.

We went to bed early, it had not been a long day but it had been a hard one. 5 hours in a hard windy rain is like 10 on a sunny day.

We slept well and got up to what seemed like a sunny day, I worked on the blog, we went out for breakfast and hung around the motel until noon. We weren't scheduled to turn in our bikes until later but were able to arrange for early transport to the airport so we headed out under now threatening skies. We avoided the rain, returned our bikes and awaited Hermann of Reuthers the outfit we rented from. We got to the airport early and I am posting my last while here.

There will be a least one more posting to wrap up our overall impressions and experience.