Day 32 Pauanui and Waihi

Well we have spent one month ( October ) in New Zealand and I am not sure if we are on schedule or not.  Not I think.  We have come to realize that there is too much to see and do even with six months to do it.  That means we are going to have to make choices, however I don't think we can make a bad one.  We are looking forward to the next five months.



Black Outline is where we travelled in October

 Today was quite sunny with very little wind so we started the off with a walk along the east shore of Tairua Harbor.  The tide was out which allowed us to walk on the hard packed sand.  It was nice.



Tairua Harbor with tide out




Town of Tairua across the harbor from Pauanui



We met a nice couple from the area and had a pleasant chat with them before pushing on.  We left Pauanui and headed for Whangamata and possibly beyond.  The driving, even though the speed limit is 100 Kilometers per hour, is slow going.  The reason is that you run into to many of these on the corners.

It is hard to average more than 45 kilometers an hour.  It is even less if you stop and take as many pictures as we have been taking.

We finally reached Whangamata and stopped in at the I Site and this is where the day got away from us.  We had a quick visit to the I site, stopped for a bit of lunch, hit the grocery store on the way out of town and all of a sudden it was 3PM.  So we jumped in the car and headed to Waihi and the Karangahake Gorge.  When we arrived we stopped at another I site to get more detailed info on the gorge.  We did that but we also found out that they are still mining gold in Waihi both in open pit mining and under ground mining.  The open pit mining that was still going on was directly across the street so we climbed up to the viewing platforms and had a look.   They are reportly realizing about 2 million dollars a day from this mine but it just looks like a big hole in the ground to me.

Open pit gold mine in Waihi



Old Pump House used intil 1912



Once we finished viewing the mine we realized it was too late to do anything at the gorge so we headed to the camper park here in Waihi and set up for the night.  Tomorrow we are headed to the gorge to do some hiking.