Cronicle of Thermal Adventurer: Manawatu

So, at the end of the 4th day at Wellington, we headed off to Palmerston North, which is located at the region known as Manawatu. This place was a mere stopping place on our way to Taupo, famed for its beautiful Lake Tuapo and cheap outdoor activity. Taupo (and Rotorua) is the North Island equivalent of Queenstown and Wanaka but more on that later. Anyway, Manawatu has its attraction as well. One of them is the Te Amati Wind Farm, photographed here on top right of the photo:





There are various places to view the wind farm, but the best is the one underneath where the car park is literally beneath one the wind turbine. Wind as a renewable energy source sounds very ideal with its almost non-existent pollution and relatively cheap cost, but practically it is hard to be viable. A place need to have winds that blows frequently enough and strong enough and must also be not too far from its beneficiaries. Anyway, we didn't stay long because we can't. It's too cold, the wind chill is just too much even in spring (1st December is "officially" recognized as start of summer in NZ). The other three photo from bottom right going clockwise: some random valley in the Manawatu region; typical NZ highway - 1 lane with not many cars punctuated by 2 laned "passing lanes" at certain intervals; Mt Ruapehu - one of the 3 active volcanoes in NZ, I heard it just recently erupted some time last year but I am certain that it did erupt in 1997.