We wanted to get out of Taupo house after more than a week of rainy weather and computer work. We drove over to the west coast of the North Island to Wanganui ... or Whanganui as both spellings (and pronunciations) are acceptable. The Maori pronounce the "wh" as a soft "f." When Europeans began settling New Zealand, they sometimes heard a "w" rather than the soft "f." So, several cities and towns have dual spellings. Even local residents don't always agree on the "correct" spelling – some prefer the European/English version while others want to use the Maori.
The roads down to Wanganui were pretty twisty (more so the further south and west we went), but still not as bad as the roads in the Northland (up by Cape Reinga). We arrived in mid afternoon and checked into our hotel that was conveniently located in the center of town near restaurants, museums, and shops. We loved the old Victorian buildings in this district of town. In fact, one of the buildings (which previously housed the daily newspaper printing facility) was repurposed into a glass blowing studio. We walked over there and enjoyed a pleasant half hour while watching three artists work on a couple of projects.
There were several local attractions, but the one that caught our attention was the Regional Museum. They claimed to have the best Maori exhibit in the country and it didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, we can't show you how wonderful it was since photos weren't allowed in the museum. This is the same guidance throughout the country ... no photos for Maori exhibits. The other attraction we visited was the War Memorial Tower. Next to the Memorial, there was an underground elevator (the only one in New Zealand) that you could ride up from the bottom of the hill, but we couldn't find the site at the bottom. We took panoramic photos of the city and river from from the top of the elevator office rather than climb to the top of the 100-foot tall War Memorial. The Tower is visible from pretty much everywhere in the city ... you can see Anna checking out the view from the Regional Museum to the Tower.
We had already decided to take a different route back to Taupo as we wanted to avoid the twisty roads (even without the weather). We made a good choice as they closed the twisty road due to flooding and landslides (it was still closed through mid-day on Wednesday). The road we took (Route 3 to Bulls, then Route 1 north to Taupo) was closed later in the day due to flooding. Our drive was not too bad, just several places where water was flowing across the road and several small rock falls (nothing to close the road at that time). We watched the local evening news and watched as the Wanganui Civil Defence evacuated several neighborhoods near our hotel. Anna also captured photos of the DC-3 plane in Mangaweka ... Sorry, Judy, no more cookies in the DC-3!
