Marokopa to Mokau

(NOTE – if you’re looking at this in the email then the videos, I’ve included, won’t show up. To see the videos in the blog then open the post on the website or in ‘Reader’. The top of the email offers you these options. It’s a simple matter. Just click!)

I’d left the campsite before anyone else had stirred. There were two Dutch men in a camper van, a New Zealand lady showing around the area a Japanese friend and two elderly, formerly local, caravan dwellers who I found difficulty in escaping to complete my chores. He could talk! We discussed the water supply and he encouraged me to put a drop of bleach in the drinking water to kill off what ever lurked within it still. I nodded sagely and thought there’s a snowball in hell’s chance I’m doing that. Lastly, there were a couple who turned up late on with two very young children. Judging by their loud banter and a liberal spraying of phlegm I’d guess they were also Dutch.

The day was grey with the usual misty wetness as I immediately had to climb. However, the views were awesome when I got up the hill and it started to look like the NZ I expected to find.

Lots of lush vegetation, rivers and streams, soaring hillsides and endless sheep and cattle. I must research the markets NZ have for sheep products. Wool now costs more to shear than it’ll fetch when sold and certainly, in the UK, I imagine the major demand for lamb or sheep meat is from immigrant minorities only. As with cheese and chicken it seemed the locals didn’t like it. (I have received dissent in the comments from the last Post about the locals not liking cheese. Frankly here in the ‘sticks’ judging by its absence I’d suggest they’d rather walk through machine gun fire than eat it.)

The road was free of traffic bar a couple of quad bikes and then a logging truck!

The asphalt had long disappeared and I contemplated some climbs to come on the gravel. However, I thought they’re never going to make logging trucks climb up gravel roads. They need traction and these roads can become mud or simply deform with the weather and their weight. I was right and asphalt resumed on the start of climbs. However the road was steep and faced with depleting my limited reserves I got off and pushed for a few metres.

Even when the road was asphalt there could be edges slip away.

This was not an uncommon sight on all my riding days. I hope that this didn’t involve a vehicle plummeting into the depths. For some time I followed a river and made better progress before I exited this logging route detour and hit the main road to Mokau.

Mokau was a coastal settlement that had a police station, school and a few shops on the main State Highway 3 between Hamilton and New Plymouth. Huge American made trucks literally crashed through most pulling trailers. There was, I discovered later, an attractive beach but closer investigation was diminished by high winds and rain.

I found the campsite replete with restaurant and checked in. I had been low on food in my panniers, ravenous and wading into fish and chips was wonderful.

Less wonderful was the absence of a phone signal. My provider, a shop keeper told me, had terrible coverage here. Oh dear! Also the campsite was old, unloved, basic and had no wi-fi in fact I was the only person staying.

Given the major road it sits on it must have such a well known miserable reputation that all steer clear of it. I took shelter in the communal room many campsites had. In line with the site’s decrepitude the light didn’t work!

In fact seeing no good reason to camp on the grass I pulled my sopping tent into this room and used the couch as my bed for the night. (The tent dried overnight.) Frankly it was a practical solution but overall a miserable night.