We left
Paeroa in the rain which put paid to our plans to bike in to the Karangahake
Gorge on the cycle trail. Maybe we will do it on the way back down the East
side. When the showers cleared a bit we did cycle 15kms of the Hauraki Cycle
Trail and picked up a few geocaches. After a visit to Thames we made our way
into the Coromandel Forest Park for the night.
We awoke to a showery
morning so abandoned the planned walk on a mountainbike track. The road in to
the Forest Park was very full of potholes so we didn’t venture beyond the first
campsite. We called back in to the DOC Visitor Centre on the way out and were
pleased we did. They had a brilliant video running about the history in the Kauaeranga
Valley of logging kauri. It is just unbelievable the hardship, scale and
engineering abilities of the guys. They used dams to collect the massive logs (most
2 mtrs diameter) and one time released a sequence of 28,000 logs down the river.
When you see a huge living kauri now it just seems so sad to think they were cutting
down trees over 1200 years old. When I see one I feel like hugging it!!!
We made full
use of the free library Wifi to pay some wages and bills then ventured further
North up the pohutukawa lined coast to a free camp at Tapu. Even though there
have been showers on and off it is still really warm.
