After leaving the National Park via a town imaginatively titled ‘National Park’ we headed on out along Route 4 heading for Wanganui on the coast.
We had no idea what to expect along this route, as we were now heading off our ‘planned’ route and into the unknown. We stopped for lunch therefore at the first town that we found. Creepy experience. Raethi used to be a prosperous timber town, and one of the shop fronts had some really good old sepia toned pictures of what it used to look like way back when. More recently, it looked like it catered to the ski crowd headed for the National Park, now however, pretty much every shop front along the high street was deserted and closed up. My minds eye saw tumbleweeds blowing along the dirt track to strains of a harmonica. All except for a fully open and bustling (there was someone in it) Angel Louise’s, a small cafe / restaurant that were happy to serve us a sandwich and a coke. I couldn’t however shake Deliverance from my mind though, and kept thinking that the only way that this place could be prospering, would be to drug gullible tourists and steal their underwear.
Still we made it out alive, and headed on down the Whanganui river, which was beautiful. We stopped at Raukawa Falls, still apparently hot on the LOTR trail…
After the falls the land started flattening out a bit, until the River Whanganui met the sea at Wanganui. Got to love the names here!
Wanganui immediately captured my heart though, it was really cute, and quaint and resembling nothing more than an old version of Bournmouth! It was brilliant! Really looked like England (except the sun was shining) and it was lively and busy and great! Still, no time to hang around, we’re heading back up the coast road now towards New Plymouth, so we can make a good start to get to the caves at Waitomo.
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