Karangahake Gorge's Historic Walk

We were looking for something to do to enjoy the nicer weather we've finally been getting and stumbled upon Karangahake Gorge, a bunch of cool walks around an area heavily used in the mining of gold in the late 19th century. A bunch of old "batteries" (a building to do with extracting gold and silver from ore, but I can't find out more about it due to Wikipedia being down for SOPA protests - BOO SOPA BTW, and ACTA, which Canada is secretly aiming to support, sigh...) were littered about the area. The highlight was an 1100 metre railway tunnel that now is a walking path through a hillside. Very cool.

For most of the trip I was craving a Double Quarter Pounder from McD's, so we drove out of our way to Paeroa to get one afterwards and the asshole manager there decided my meal wasn't worth more than 2 ketchup packets so out of frustration at being denied more ketchup I returned my meal for a refund and they threw it out instead. Totally sounds reasonable to me, 2-3 more packets is too much of a waste, so we'll waste this whole meal instead. McDonald's NZ's twitter account seemed to agree with the manager. So it's off to BK and Wendy's when I crave a burger from now on, thanks for nothing! =\

We walked from Karangahake parking to Owharoa Falls.

Cool bridge

Dexter and Jacqui on a very swingy bridge.

One of the batteries

The entrance to the old tunnel on the top, car bridge on the bottom.

Dexter's totally in his element... Long walks are beloved by our dog. :D

Bye daylight...

Inside the Karangahake Gorge tunnel looked super cool.

Can I go swimming please?

Dexter gets some fetch before we continue on

Tall waterfall!

We found this waterfall on the way that wasn't mentioned on any of the maps we found online.

Dexter found this stick on his own and wanted to play. lol

Pretty flowers

Dexter wanted to walk by these flowers twice they were so pretty.

This was our destination on our chosen walk, the Owharoa falls (who knows how to pronounce that)

We all made it! This picture was taken by balancing the camera on a bucket, but we had ironically just met 2 Canadians from Edmonton minutes before. Small world!

Dexter wasn't cooperating with the self portrait

Nice close-up

Plants are making a cool pattern in this stream

Little bird on the path looks grumpy

Jacqui is being crushed! Dexter is interested.

One of the walkways by the river. This place was pretty deserted considering how nice it was and how cool the scenery is!

Dexter is thinking about jumping in, but the current is too strong!

Cool swirlys in the water