South to Wellington

After leaving Ohakune, we took some small roads to reach the Whanganui River Road. The Whanganui river is long (the longest navigable river in NZ, apparently), and full of great views and little villages. The road itself is also a bit of a destination, being one-lane (but two-way) most of the way, often gravel, and an active logging truck road. Oh and it's ridiculously windy, so we said a small prayer going around every blind curve that a big truck wasn't going the other way.

It was a very pretty river, however. Lots of operators do tours on one or another kind of boat down the river, or combo boat-walk tours to fun places like the Bridge to Nowhere (that is its official name) or the easier to find Bridge to Somewhere (also the official name). We would recommend one of these to anyone who could afford it.

At the mouth of the river is the town of Whanganui (aka Wanganui). We stopped at Rapido Espresso House for a coffee and some chile fudge. Whanganui is quite a nice little town and one could spend some quality time there. We, however, headed further south along the coast, cutting through the mountains north of Wellington on Akatawara Road to the suburb of Upper Hutt. Akatawara was another one-lane but two-way road entirely composed of blind turns, and an active logging truck road. What a day for roads! We survived this road as well and arrived at Harcourt Holiday Park, where they apparently filmed the Isengard Gardens scenes in LOTR (the parts before the hole-digging and tree-burning). There we took a walk along the Hutt River (Anduin in LOTR) and up a tributary stream into the bush. The area was very pretty, and lots of LOTR filming was done here, e.g. Rivendell was just north of where we stayed. The holiday park was our least favorite so far, however, with little charm and grumpy operators.

The next day we woke up early for the short drive into Wellington to catch our ferry across the Cook Straight. The plan is to do the South Island and we'll leave a few things we wanted to do in the North for the end of the trip, time allowing.