Wairakei-Napier

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 313, 29 August 1932, Page 8

Wairakei--Napier

The W airak ei-N api er Road is an important link in the main highway between Rotorua, Palmerston, and Wellington. It can be safely negotiated in all weathers, and is now the favourite route for ■ motorists journeying north or south. Leaving Wairakei the road passes through Taupo and along the shores of the lake until it begins the climb toward Opipi, 2,000 feet above sea level. By degrees the car passes out of the region of thermal activity, though as a reminder an occasional hot spring is to be seen. Immense boulders and pumice rocks lie strewn about ihe country, bearing eloquent testimony to the maghty volcanic upheavals of past ages. The journey is enlivened by two great aseents to the top of Taurangalcuma, then ' down into the valley of the Mohaka River, and up again to the Titiokura Saddle, 1,200 feet above> the Mohaka. Erom these high altitudes uninterrupted views of rugged and magnificent country are_ to be had, the perspective on all sides fadmg into the far distance. The final descent brings the traveller into the nch sheep country of Hawke's Bay. Handsome and spacious homesteads, embodying modern ideas of comfort and luxury, furnish evidence of the grea