Saturday, March 21: Sunny the whole day with very few clouds, warm

Tramping: Clifton to Cape Kidnappers along the beach and back, 19.1 km

Stag Park Diner, 151 Napier Taupo Highway, State Highway 5, Taupo 3379, tel.: +64 7 378 6403, twin as single, shared facilities ($55)

It was nice to have slept in a real bed again, above all, with a real pillow. The room was spotless and the fridge with freezer rebooted the chilly bag; a short trip to the supermarket procured everything that was needed for breakfast and lunch, and I was away back on the road to Hastings by 9:30.

In Hastings the library opened as I arrived and they were charging for the wifi @ $2.5 per half hour. Tried the BBH places in Taupo, but all booked out, then for the 0800 number for the Taupo i-site to call when I came back from the walk in the afternoon.

Then it was down to Clifton to start the Cape Kidnappers walk. Due to the horse show there were detours in place; in any case the signage was not particularly good. Wandered around a bit before I was on the right track and after a good 30 minutes was down at the beach. I thought this might be cutting it a bit fine, but the DOC sign on the foreshore, which had suggested times had failed the test of time and had been washed away.

In order not to lose too much time I marched along the beach – the tide was pretty far out, overtaking a couple of other hikers and the tractor ride (would leave tomorrow @ 11:30, so it must have left today @ 10:30) which was at the first colony, had disgorged everybody, and didn’t seem to have reached the plateau colony at all. Well, if they only have to do ¾ of the trip and there is a sizable colony to be seen? The trickiest part is, of course, the final stretch, but it seems to me to be the greater loss. In any case I pressed on right up to the plateau to take two time lapses and hundreds of shots on the way back. Stopped at the hut by the beach for lunch and then marched back to the one corner with just one other tramper. To circumnavigate most of the deeper trenches I had taken a higher path along ledges after the first, ankle deep trench and had passed in both directions with rather dry stuff.

At the Black Rock colony again I unpacked the SX120 to take the big panorama (from further away) and a number of snapshots – mainly of the rocks, fossils and cliff structures with pol filter along the way. Will see how these turn out.

Was back at the car at 3:30 which was well within the safety zone. In Clive I phoned the Taupo i-site – they were not very helpful – one name of a place – Stag Park – and a couple of phone numbers were all they had to offer. Drove into Napier to the i-site but their directions to the wifi zone were pretty vague and I thought it not very useful – with little seating – to try working the laptop in this rather bare pedestrian zone. Had a hokey-pokey (real gelato!) for $4 – a bit overpriced but OK, then decided to make it to Taupo. Looked at a motorcamp in Bay View but they had no cabins, so on it was.

The first half of this trip is very wild and would be a challenge to tramp in. After reaching the central plateau, Taupo could be envisioned because of the characteristic mountain in the distance. Once here I found Stag Park almost immediately (6:30), but then the problems arose – no wifi. Wifi needs to have priority over reaching a destination, especially one like Taupo. First there has to be some kind of rebooting of the accommodation after a walk. Possibly a good solution to this would be a repeat stay, with at least some hope of finding wifi to book airbnb or BBH or telephone a BBH hostel to get one step further. Secondly, Taupo is a tourist nightmare and the i-site seems incapable of dealing meaningfully with any inquiries. I have no idea how you would find a reasonably priced accommodation with wifi at any notice, let alone short, and neither does the i-site. Thirdly there doesn’t even seem to be any public wifi in Taupo, and no café advertises with wifi; the only “internet café” was abandoned on second view, and Burger King’s wifi is unsecured so that airbnb’s login doesn’t work. Having tried all I could, I could get no further, and the thought of going door-to-door from motel to motel asking how much their rooms were – even if a lot of them were offering vacancies – sort of destroys the point. So it was back to Stag Park for their $55 room (fairly good value, but definitely a trucker location) and for $15 the double bacon burger with chips and free trucker black coffee was reasonable.

One eye has become very swollen, so an antihistamine was necessary, as was a shower and some fresh clothes.

I am in need of a bit of a technical day as well, even though it looks like sunshine pure for the next couple of days. But the reboot is necessary.

At around 8:00 there was a fireball to what I imagine is south of Taupo. Let’s see.