Kaimai mamaku forest park, karangahake reserve, Te Aroha
Ok, to sum up the day, very weird. The thing I had planned to do was not exceptional and at some point in the rain and two things coming out of the blue.
Right, Kaimai-Mamaku forest park was meant to be my destination of the day. I wanted to hike on one track up to sentinel rock. I started out in the morning and it was drizzling. After an hour I have reached the lookout and the mist was blocking the view. Utterly nothing exciting. Having finished after two hours (time to go back to the car) and being disappointing by the weather and the lack of real sightseeing, I stopped in a cafe along SH2 to get an access to the wifi and seeking for something else to do. I found another track in the same forest, to be completed in 5 hours and pretending to offer nice view, supposedly... I have finished the tramping in 2 hours and a half and concerning the view, not many and not spectacular. However, I did something worthy of being broadcast in a comic video show. At some point of the track, a tree clearance appeared but there were still some of them blocking the view. I decided to climb it and obviously the branch could not carry my weigh so it cracked and I fell down, ripping off my short and losing my camera. After digging down for a couple of minutes, the camera showed up and seemed broken but after taking off the battery and popping it back in, everything came back to normal, except for my short. Anyone cannot be Tarzan...
Now the unexpected. Still having some time I wished to do something else on the way to my next step. I spotted a gorge a few days ago without paying more attention along SH2 (another one). When I arrived there, the car park was full, likely to be a good sign. Indeed The site is a historic gold mine. Many tunnels were dug straight on the gorge rock face to extract the quartz ore that would be transform in gold using different process. The place is a huge maze but most of the tunnels are today inaccessible and lock down due to the instability of the location. On top of being a historic site, the gorge is picturesque with sheer cliff. After about an hour on-site, I had to carry on toward Cambridge and on the way I drove through a township called Te Aroha. You don’t need to spend a all day there but the town centre houses a few nice buildings.
After all those adventures, I settled down in Cambridge for the night in a quiet Backpackers that time.
Kaimai Mamaku forest park
https://plus.google.com/photos/113495650656525472061/albums/5967915667726159217?banner=pwa
Karangahake reserve
https://plus.google.com/photos/113495650656525472061/albums/5967916572333957985?banner=pwa
Te Aroha
https://plus.google.com/photos/113495650656525472061/albums/5967917325932848177?banner=pwa
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