23rd June - Central: Mangakino to Okahune Heading south I was aiming for different roads than before, so I headed down from Mangakino around the west side of lake Taupo. There is a reason the East is the tourist drive! The west is a reasonably nice winding road through the farmland, but there's almost no lake views (I think because of the terrain not the weather, although the lake view I did get is mostly cloud!) I passed another nice power station lake up at Whakamaru, the entrance to a few hikes that would probably be nice on a dry day but otherwise not much. Further south it was back into National Park territory, but with the clouds still hanging low Ruapehu and Tongariro were virtually invisible. The rain was only getting worse, so I pretty much stuck to the driving down the west side of the park to an overnight camp at Raetihi where I took advantage of the indoors to hone my jigsaw skills (and avoid another night hanging out in the car!). The next morning was not exactly gloriously sunny, but the rain was spitting rather than pouring so I headed up the Okahune mountain road to the Turoa ski field. It's still closed due to lack of snow but there were a couple of waterfalls on the way up, one of which had a starring role in Lord of the rings (Gollum caught a fish there) and they were very pretty. The views would probably be fantastic on a clear day, but I mostly got cloud and rain then back into Okahune to stock up for the Whanganui river road.
