Excellent tramp. Walked up Waiorongomai valley, mostly following old gold tramways. The inclines I thought were just steep sections when I saw them marked on the map turn out to be where the cars were winched up the mountainside. The track then went up over the saddle and up Mt Te Aroha. Visibility was pretty bad from the top, but it cleared a bit while I was up there. Came down the mountain track back into town. Had a beer at the Te Aroha pub ($5/pint), then fell asleep.

Added Moore photos

Arrived in Te Aroha about 4pm.  I’m pretty sure I took a zig-zag route, but got here anyway.  Talked to the manager about tramps and she’s kindly offered to drive me down to Waioronomai Valley so I can walk up Te Aroha and then back down into the other side of town (9am tomorrow).

They have wireless (which I’m using right now) in the motel, but their DNS server is screwed up. I’m guessing they may be favouring WINS over DNS.  I need to contact the Te Aroha LUG. My solution is just to use the Xtra DNS servers (202.27.158.40 and 202.27.156.72).

Went for a walk arount the wetland, then up past the YHA (which I wanted to check out) along another track behind the town and then back down to the domain.  Bought some food for dinner and tomorrow’s lunch at the supermarket and have been just chilling out here.  Another great feature of the motel is the room comes with a cat to keep me company.

Pretty tired.  It’s great how quiet it is, even though the motel is right on the main street.  No screams or sirens or yelling like in Auckland City on a Friday night.  Will probably go to sleep soon.  Still haven’t fixed the blog theme.  Will pack tomorrow, only a day trip so no big deal.  Wish I could find my compass.

Moore photos available over here.

I’m going to take Friday and Monday off work. Going down to Te Aroha on Friday, to do some walks there.

I seriously looked at renting a camper van. The best deal I could find was with Britz, but it was still too much. $95/night for 5 days minimum, for a camper van with a shower and toilet. So like a motor home, but hopefully not as slow. $95/day seemed ok .. for something I’ve never done and have always been interested in doing.

But then insurance is a killer. There’s a $7500 bond and they want to take it off your credit card before you leave and my credit card only goes to $2000. To remove the excess off I’d have to pay an extra $38/night + $50, taking the whole thing up to $715.

So, I decided instead to book a motel unit for $80/night. I would have taken the tent but it is going to pour down. (Heavy rain warnings for Friday). A unit will be snug and dry, and it has broadband.

I’ve heard though, that they need the motor homes brought back north, so you can just about get them for free if you go one way in that direction. I’ll have to look into that later.

This blog post was extracted from a GTalk conversation. I should write a Talk2Blog plugin for WordPress to do this automagically.