Up at 7:30 a.m. to threatening skies; OK – another day of vacation in New Zealand! After completing my morning routine, packing, and a hearty breakfast of Harroway’s Oat Cereal (a New Zealand product similar to Quaker Instant Oatmeal, but the oats are ground finer and it makes more of a mush than oatmeal), I watched the weather forecast on TV One.
The cold front, as predicted yesterday, was moving up from the southeast – meaning the southeast coast of the North Island would be rainy today. I also checked the weather forecast from www.metservice.com, which is sort of the NOAA of New Zealand. They agreed; the east coast would be rainy (which is more intense precipitation than “showers”, I learned), while the west coast would be fair.
I looked at my options. My goal for the day was to wind up near Wellington, such that I could approach it tomorrow from the east – thereby fulfilling another goal of this trip: riding through the Rimutakas, a “five-smile” route in the Motorcycle Atlas, and the photo I’ve had as a background on my phone back home since I started planning this trip.
I would start out toward Taupo, about 90 km south. From Taupo, I would have to choose one of two different routes south: one headed east, toward Napier, the Pacific Coast, and the rain, or another that carried me down the west side of the country, through Turangi and across the “desert road”, and the sunshine. I took Horace Greeley’s advice and decided to “Go West, Young Man”.
The skies still looked threatening, and the temps were cooler (it was 7 C, or about 45 F when I left), so I put on my electric jacket liner, leather jacket and pants, rain suit top and bottom, and retroreflective vest. I was wheels up at 10:15.
After 40 minutes on SH5, or 20 km before Taupo, it began raining; sometimes light, sometimes heavy. As soon as my western route diverged from the southern route, the rain stopped: aha – good choice! – but only for ten minutes, after which it began raining again. But not before I stopped to take this photo of Lake Taupo from its north end:
(Note the rainbow. Did I mention it was raining?)
The road (now SH1) wrapped around the eastern and southern shores of Lake Taupo, with nice, gently sweeping curves where you were never going in a straight line, yet you could make decent progress. The rain was light most of the way to Turangi, where I turned due south onto “The Desert Road”. The Desert Road is actually a misnomer; there’s no desert, but it does cross the flat, central plain of the North Island. And where a desert is typically hot, the desert road is cold – the morning’s forecast called for a chance of up to 1 cm of snow, but temps around 10 C (50 degrees F) (?) – so I figured I was OK.
As soon as I made the turn, the reading on my dashboard thermometer dropped from 10 C to 6 C, and I began climbing on a set of slow, sharp esses. The wind and rain both picked up, and I kept climbing for about 20 minutes. When the curves stopped, I was at the top of the plain; the road straightened out, the rain and side wind both picked up, and the temperature kept dropping, bottoming out at 3 C (37 F). For only the second time of the trip, I plugged the jacket liner in and set it for about 20% of power.
Snow appeared on the tops of the mountains to the east, and I also saw my first New Zealand police officer of the trip. I was going about 90 kph (in a 100 kph zone) due to the side winds, so we didn’t get a chance to talk. But the road was sufficiently straight, long, and wet, that it warranted this proof:
(Again, sorry about the RAIN on the lens....)
After about 90 km of The Desert Road, I arrived in Taihape, where I stopped in the local bakery for hot tea and a scone. Back on the road 20 minutes later, the rain had stopped and the skies were clearing as I headed for Feilding via a combination of SH1 and SH54. SH54 was another pleasant, winding road, and I eventually turned onto some back roads toward Woodville; here I picked upSH2 toward Masterson.
Naturally, being the eastern route, along the coast – it was clear – the exact opposite of the forecast. I arrived in Masterson 80 km later at 4:50 p.m. Got a room for the night at the Highwaymen Lodge, and am preparing to ride the 90 km into Wellington tomorrow a.m. I hope to see the “Beehive”, and catch either the 1:00 or 3:00 ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton and the South Island. The odyssey continues.
Motorcycle mileage: 423 km for the day
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