A bright sunny day today with temperatures up to 16 degrees, however, it felt really warm when getting out of the car. We had a 320 Km drive ahead of us with few stops along the way. The first one being the small town of Bulls where most of the shops had something to do with cows/bulls in their name. A signpost next to a big bull gave directions. We had a coffee break at Mangaweka airport or at least where it says the terminal is, an old DC3 next to the cafe can be visited.
In Taihape there’s an annual gumboot throwing competition so they have a giant gumboot at the edge of town.
We decided to take a side road up to 1300m to Mangawhero Falls but were a little disappointed as the waterfall didn’t have a large amount of water dropping down.
We checked in to our hotel and reconfirmed the shuttle that will bring us to the start of the Tongariro crossing tomorrow. The weather looks OK, temperature should even be above freezing but the 7:30 start will mean we’ll have to get up very early….