A bumpy road and next to no people

One thing you really notice moving from the south to the north island is how much more populous the north is in general, but there is an exception to this, it's a place called Lake Waikeramoana in the north east of the main chunk of the island. We arrived there after visiting Napier on the east coast, and we travelled there on our way to our eventual destination - Rotorua and it's various sulphur stenches and steaming hot water (more of which Claire will be posting about) - from which the lake is due west.

After visiting a number of towns on the North island, it was felt a dose of isolation was required, (the South island can make you so intolerant of other human beings as there aren't many, approx 1 million) and Waikeramoana was the perfect medicine. You have to travel over a minimum of 200km on dirt roads to get from anywhere to there and very few Kiwi's could say they've been there but once you've made the journey it's soon obvious it's worth it. It is as close to wilderness as the north gets** - it's a large, stupendously clear lake surrounded by waterfalls, green forest and big rocks. Within a section of the rocks there are a network of caves which Claire and I managed to get lost in. There are other lakes in the area too, one of which we walked to was Lake Waikereiti. This lake is of particular significance to the Maori as it's where they used to send their women and kids to when inter tribal conflict was in the offing. It was the most peaceful lake via yet another stunning walk through many types of fern (I love fern trees!) and large NZ pine trees among many others. As with most of the forests that we have came across in NZ it was a temperate rainforest where many types of bird reside, one of these is a Kaka, this is one of 4 or 5 types of parrot living in NZ and 3 times as big as your average budgie, we saw one from afar but it gave itself away from the noise or should I say horrendous screech it makes, there was no mistaking it! Another noteworthy site in the area was a walk via some very, very old Tawa trees, one of which you can see in the pics section of the same name of this blog, we were a bit naughty and stepped over some 'Keep Out' signs to get the pic, please don't tell DoC!

We also discovered a less natural but no less wonderful entity here, and that is the TipTop version of the Feast with proper bits of cookie in them, when I say proper, these were good solid chunks, absolutely mind blowing ice cream, shame is we found them so late but we probably saved ourselves a fortune!

**re remoteness, this is as far as I know, sadly we didn't make it to the far north