20/1 Day 4. Camped at Whakamaru Ski club, a freedom camping area on Whakamaru Lake. I know its a freedom camping area, but having a converted railway container, tandem camper trailer, two white carports AND a tent is probably taking the piss a bit. There was a two day max limit after all. It would have taken 2 days (and a truckntrailer) just for them to set up. Anywhoo, got on the lake early as, looking forward to a nice day, I was a bit dubious due to the amount of waterskiers and Jet Skis buzzing the campsite last night when I arrived, but clearly the drone of the two-strokes must have hypnotized them into a deep sleep, as they were all still asleep (in their railway container no doubt)when I set off. Lake Whakamaru has a bit of nice scenery, craggy bluffs and escarpments, a bit of second growth native, and the ubiquitous pine forest. Those forestry planters were bloody tough buggers, some of those planted faces were just about vertical. A lot of what was around the lake was very nice, but the real disappointment was what was in the lake. Weed. Plastic. Rubbish. Weed. Slime. Rocksnot. It was so dirty I cut my day short and turned around at the christian camp. By this stage the weedbeds were regularly spanning the lake (about 80m at this point), so thick that grass clumps were growing in it. The bed in the attached video is about 10 acres (4 rugby fields) I estimate. Rather than stay another night, I went to Tokoroa instead for the day, and walked through the Cougar Park mtb tracks. Very nice! Stayed at the Tokoroa camp ground, which was a very interesting experience. There were about 15 regulars, who all seemed to be drunks, including Billy, the caretaker. He walked me round and part of his introduction was an admonishment to each of the tenants not to eat my food in the fridge. Obviously a common issue there. Also, everything was bolted down - even the jug and the toaster were permanently fixed! I was the sole camper. It was a very strange evening. I left word with a friend to raise the alarm if they didnt hear from me within 24 hours. It was like I expect a Tinder date would be.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 22:31:12 +0000
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