Wednesday, January 6, 2010 Taupo, New Zealand
If you want an example of an inauspicious start to a day, here it is. Fortunately the spare tyre and jack were in the trunk and in fine condition, and we had no trouble finding a tyre repair shop, who fixed it while we had breakfast.
We then drove south along the east shore of Lake Taupo, and then 16 km off the highway on a forest road to the Kaimanawa Forest Park, a very extensive preserved wild area in the midst of vast commercial forest lands. The loop trail that we hiked was almost 4 km long, and we were worn out by the end.
I also discovered a serious limitation of our GPS. We bought a Garmin Nuvi 1370, a model that is primarily designed for driving, and it has been very useful and comforting on our travels. We had loaded it with all of Great Britain, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand before we left the states. I carried it with me during our hike, since the loop trail we meant to hike was part of a more extensive system of forest trails, and I wanted to be sure we wound up back where we started. Well, we did, but no thanks to the GPS. The battery was exhausted about two thirds of the way around. It was obviously designed to be kept plugged in to the car's electrical system, not carried around out in the wild for hours on end.
There were some really big trees. According to Tyler (without consulting his favorite botanist), the proper name of this one is "Treeus enormous" in the family Reallybigae.
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