Tupapakurua and Tawhai Waterfalls
Never trust New Zealand’s weather forecast! On Saturday we woke up and the sun was bashfully shining behind the clouds. Where is the strong wind, clouds and rain from the forecast?
As we hadn’t expected such a nice weather, for Saturday we’d planned a shorter track which went for most of time through forest and so, we would be sheltered from rain. But now we were sheltered from sunshine.
This track supposed to be more relaxing compared to that one to Tama Lakes but, eventually, it wore us out. The track included a few steep sections, climbing over fallen trees and crossing number of small streams.
The Taranaki Lookout at beginning of the track didn’t impressed us - hills at the far horizon and that was it. The bigger surprise was the Tupapakurua waterfall itself. For a while, we could hear the water flowing somewhere along the path at the bottom of valley but still couldn’t see anything. At one point we turned a corner and suddenly we saw the water falling over the edge of high cliff down into the green deep. Much better lookout!
At the time when we got back to the car-park the sky had already been clear and we finally could see the volcanoes in all their glory. We decided to go closer and try to find a better spot for taking pictures when, suddenly, we noticed a sign to Tawhai falls just 15 minutes from car-park.
This Saturday was definitely a day of unexpectedly beautiful waterfalls. These ones were not so high but they had bigger volume of water which was falling into a sky-blue lagoon. The whole impression was highlighted by sunshine and even a rainbow.
