Day 11: Sunday 8th December
Breakfast in the hotel was totally different today and a good experience after yesterday with barely anything left. Bolton Hotel 7.5/10 . Our car hire company, Omega was picking us up at the hotel at 9.00 am so it was a fairly early start getting everything packed and ready to go. They took us down to their base to sign paperwork and we were off on the road by 9.30. Leaving Wellington on a fairly busy motorway was quite a change from the South Island roads we had been used to. However we were soon out of town travelling on a fairly quiet State Highway 1. Although it was still a single carriageway road we found in many places there were signs telling drivers to stay on the left unless passing. We are not used to these but found they worked very well giving opportunities to overtake any slow vehicles. It rained for quite a bit of the journey so we ploughed on as this was our longest drive today, just over 4 hours.
We found a nice café to stop for some lunch, The Woolshed in Sanson, just before the junction with State. Hwy 3. It was here that we came to realise the NZ custom of ordering at the counter and the waitresses bringing your tea or coffee to the table or sometimes being given a little electronic device which flashed when your drink was ready. We are used to picking up the hot drinks as we pay for them!
The weather brightened a bit then started raining again as we approached the mountains of The National Park. We had booked the next 2 nights to stay in Whakapapa (I just loved the name!), at the hotel Chateau Tongariro.
I had been looking forward to staying here and it lived up to expectations. It was a large hotel still with the grandeur of the time it was built in 1920s. When we arrived we did have a slight problem with the car in that the boot wouldn’t shut! It was a bit of a pain as it was raining and we had wanted to leave some of our luggage in the boot. Fortunately another couple checking in at the same time overheard our predicament and offered to lend us some string to tie it down. Next, to phone Omega. As we were far from any of their bases in the middle of The National Park we had to have the AA out. They came within an hour, fiddled with a screwdriver, told us to give it a good bang and all was resolved for the rest of our holiday. The weather was miserable so after checking into our room, we decided to sit in the beautiful lounge with a rather grey view of the mountains and have a drink.
They had an on site café/restaurant and also a fine dining restaurant. We chose the café/restaurant for our first night saving the best till last!
Day 12: Monday 9th December
We awoke to a sunny day with blue skies and went down for breakfast, a much better experience than at the Bolton. A lovely dining room and I tried kiwi juice for the first time, delicious!
Our hotel was located in a wonderful spot for walking. We had picked up a leaflet from Reception that showed all the walking trails in the area with details of distance etc. There were 6 that you could do just walking from the hotel and another 9 by taking a short car journey. Whakapapa is a very small village but has a DOC tourist info centre which probably also has this leaflet.
As we left the hotel we saw this sign, a reminder to all that you are in the midst of a volcanic area.
We wanted to pick up some supplies for a picnic and so went to the only little store by the holiday park. There was very little choice and I could only buy one sausage roll between us, some crisps, cookies and a bottle of water to keep us going. I really felt they were missing a trick here and could have done far more trade with all the walkers in the area. We chose a 2 hour walk to Taranaki falls. It was a good walk with lovely views, and lots of wild flowers at this time of year. It was not too strenuous either.
Taranaki Falls
We returned to our room for an hour and actually ate our food there before going back out for another walk, this time to Silica Rapids a 2 1/2 hour walk. Unfortunately this time it started to rain about 20 minutes into the walk. It was a bit wet for about an hour but then left off and was ok for the rest of the day. We had booked a table in the hotel’s Ruapehu Room for the evening and had an excellent meal with good wine and were well looked after by the staff. 9.5/10 for this hotel. Wished we had longer here as the scenery was amazing with so many good walking trails.