Tour Day 6 - Taupo to Wellington

 Driving South on State Highway 1

Heading South to Wellington as our North Island sojourn draws to a close.

At home when planning it seemed a purely driving day especially as we had chosen to take the most direct route. However, State Highway 1 was to give us an enjoyable drive through varied terrain.

Initially following the shoreline of the beautiful Lake Taupo before leaving it behind and heading South,  The land varied from heavily forested through high bleak heather moorland and semi volcanic desert looking across to the cloud covered Mount Ngauruhoe, Mount Doom in the Lord of The Rings films.

Highway 1 continued winding though undulating hills before dropping to open wide pasture and later arable farmland. It was full day of massive vistas across varied lands to distant hill ranges.

Our pitch last night

Lake Taupo

Maybe I do?  Excellent coffee served nearby :)

Van life

Mount Doomin cloud

Autumn coming in the Southern Hemisphere

random rope bridge by our late lunch pull in

Limited to 90kph, journeys take time even on straight roads and the driving can feel laborious. There aren't many pull offs so we were mid-afternoon before stopping for lunch in a picnic site. 

We arrived on the outskirts of Wellington around 5 and the traffic was awful. We hadn't stopped for shopping but in the traffic we just wanted to get to the site. We had hoped for an early relaxing stop but instead waiting 45 minutes for traffic to die down before driving out again. With problems parking the RV at the first store, it was 8:30 by the time  we stopped the engine on our pitch for the night.

A meal was cooked and eaten - with wine of course and laundry successfully processed before finally hitting the pillows.

Statistics: Miles today: 230 ; Miles so far: 764 ; Fuel added so far: 103.5 litres ; North Island; Time Zone: UTC +13 New Zealand Daylight Time (NZDT )