The scenery is incredible! You really need to see it for yourself. We headed north-west out of Aukland, chosen because it’s the shortest route away from traffic and all those crazy people
driving little tiny cars on the wrong side of the road. The closest regional park is the Waitakere Ranges, and the closest waterfall is in the Karamatura Valley. What a start! It’s hardly even
mentioned in the standard guide book we brought, and not mentioned at all in the guide book the rental place gave us, but labeled as “must see” in the book “NZ Frenzy - an adventurer’s guide to New Zealand’s wild places” by Scott Cook. This is a small book we found on Amazon, written by a guy from the states that spent a couple of 3 month periods tramping around the North Island lamenting the dirth of good guides to all the beautiful non-commercial sites. So he wrote it, and we’re learning to live by it.
Karamatura Valley is a drive-in picnic spot with walk-in tent camping allowed, but overnighting
in a self contained campervan such as we have is allowed in all the Regional Park car parks. So
far we’ve found beautiful well-marked trails, almost no litter or graffiti, and universally friendly
people. Here’s what we saw in our tramp around the area:
We found a Mermaid!!!
3 comments:
wow, nice pictures, and nice to hear from you again! We're off to visit colleges in oregon and washington - I think that will be pretty too, but perhaps not quite as dramatic ... Continue having fun!
What fun you both are having. Wonder were the "Hobbits" is being filmed in New Zealand? Anne is so jealous.
Most of the filming is on the South Island, but we did see a few Hobbits running around.
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