Karangahake Gorge

Heading south off of the Peninsula we headed inland again to discover the Karangahale Gorge. It happens that they also discovered gold around here so in additional to the natural beauty of the gorge we visited some ruins of another time, which wasn't that long ago. Everything was abandoned around the 1950s and except the town of Waihi who are still using some old buildings, all the factories went into ruins. It was like going through a modern archeological site as the vegetation was already starting to take over most of the old buildings. To move the ore around they built some railways and tunnels. Some of them are still up today and we had the chance to walk through a 1km tunnel on our walk. Quite spooky as it is very straight and the end always seems so close but also very far away.

Our luck with the weather has finally changed and most of the morning was grey and raining, despite the horrible weather we ended up doing a 16km walk along the river which runs through the gorge with a nice stop for lunch in a station cafe. Our camping spot for the night is right by the beach and by late afternoon the skies started clearing up and the sun come out out so we got to enjoy a post dinner stroll along the sand, still a little windy but a nice way to end the day. A lot of walking today we will definitely be sleeping well tonight.Read more