{"id":928,"date":"2015-06-30T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skeptic.de\/blog\/kv\/?p=928"},"modified":"2016-11-18T17:34:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T16:34:50","slug":"39-waipawa-cape-kidnappers-taupo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leetraynor.com\/blog.multi\/kiwi5\/?p=928","title":{"rendered":"39. Waipawa \u2013 Cape Kidnappers \u2013 Taupo"},"content":{"rendered":"
Saturday, March 21: Sunny the whole day with very few clouds, warm<\/h5>\n

Tramping: Clifton to Cape Kidnappers along the beach and back, 19.1 km<\/h4>\n

Stag Park Diner<\/a>, 151 Napier Taupo Highway, State Highway 5, Taupo 3379, tel.: +64 7 378 6403, twin as single, shared facilities ($55)<\/h4>\n
\"Layers<\/a>
Leaching lime is most commonly seen, but also iron oxide, forming strange patterns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"Under<\/a>
Under this veritable black forest gateau of the geological record, a person picks their way along the beach (right – to scale)<\/figcaption><\/figure>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.<\/p>\n

\"White<\/a>
White cliffs of Hastings. [download id=\"1943\"]<\/figcaption><\/figure>In order not to lose too much time I marched along the beach \u2013 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\u2019t seem to have reached the plateau colony at all. Well, if they only have to do \u00be 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.<\/p>\n

\"Cape<\/a>
Cape Kidnappers, Black Rock gannet colony, bracketed, pol filtered, panorama<\/figcaption><\/figure>At the Black Rock colony again I unpacked the SX120 to take the big panorama (from further away) and a number of snapshots \u2013 mainly of the rocks, fossils and cliff structures with pol filter along the way. Will see how these turn out.<\/p>\n

\"Shell<\/a>
Some sediments carry fossil sea shells as far as the eye can see<\/figcaption><\/figure>Was back at the car at 3:30 which was well within the safety zone. In Clive I phoned the Taupo i-site \u2013 they were not very helpful \u2013 one name of a place \u2013 Stag Park \u2013 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 \u2013 with little seating \u2013 to try working the laptop in this rather bare pedestrian zone. Had a hokey-pokey (real gelato!) for $4 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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\u2019t even seem to be any public wifi in Taupo, and no caf\u00e9 advertises with wifi; the only \u201cinternet caf\u00e9\u201d was abandoned on second view, and Burger King\u2019s wifi is unsecured so that airbnb\u2019s login doesn\u2019t 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 \u2013 even if a lot of them were offering vacancies \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

One eye has become very swollen, so an antihistamine was necessary, as was a shower and some fresh clothes.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

At around 8:00 there was a fireball to what I imagine is south of Taupo. Let\u2019s see.\"No