And so to North Island

  12/03/2013
 On leaving Wellington you have two choices of route, both heading north. Route 1 heads north towards the west coast, Route 2 goes out east. We spent 3 days in Wellington when we were here 4 years ago so decided to head up the west coast and give Wellington a miss.
 For quite some distance the road follows the coast with many fine views  and when the highway wanders inland there are still lots of minor roads back out  to the coast. We tried a couple of them with the usual result, after a look at the sea we found ourselves in some housing estate searching for a way back to the highway.
 Many of the towns we travel through have unpronounceable Maori names (lots of Ws and H’s) with the exception of one town named “Bulls”.  The town sign said “Bulls, a town like no udder” It made us laugh!
 It has taken all day to reach Wanganui, about 200K’s, and are camped in a lovely spot by the river so we will stay here a couple of nights. There seems to be plenty to see in this large town, plus, I need to get my ears rodded…….again.

  13/03/2013
  Here in New Zealand, unlike Australia, where, if you need to see a doctor you just rock up to any old GP’s surgery, make an appointment, see the man, and pay your money.  In New Zealand, as a foreigner, you have to go to Accident and Emergency at the hospital and stand in line to see the doctor. Feeling a bit of a fraud in amongst the broken legs and other people at deaths door, I managed to see a nurse who said they didn’t do ear rodding at the hospital, go and see an ear cleaner.  That will be $65 please. We declined to pay and did a runner.
 Eventually we found an ear woman who  poked around a bit and charged $45 for  job well done. I am now in the land of noise.
 All of this took most of the day so we haven’t got to look around the Wanganui attractions and are not likely to as we are moving on tomorrow. In the meantime we are sitting with our early evening beers by the river in this very pleasant campsite and I can hear the traffic going over the river bridge.

 14/03/2013
  Just when we think we have seen it all up jumps another fantastic part of our journey. The drive today isn’t on most maps, but you can get a special Wanganui River Road Map from the tourist info office, which we did. The road or track, actually follows the river for about 100K and is single track for most of the way with the odd wide bit for passing, and 20K’s of it are gravel. The map states that the driving time without stops is 1 ½ hours, it took us double that, with many photo stops. Millions of years ago the ocean covered this area so it was no surprise to see, what is known as The Oyster Cliffs. Here there are 1000’s of oyster shells embedded in the side of the cliff a hundred metres or more above the river bed. We passed through a few Maori settlements that have been here for a few hundred years, going back to when the only access was by river. The views along the river were stunning and again we hope our camera is up to the job, it had no worries with the weather, it was hot and clear.
 We have stopped for the night at a nice little campsite near Taumarunai which we can’t pronounce ( should have carried on to Turangi) then tomorrow we are to meet up with a friend from Warwickshire, who lives here now, Rachel.