Coronation Court Motel New Plymouth

Cultured Cows LOL

by cnango

While walking through Dairyland I saw this display of a Cow in a stall with a radio on a stool nearby. My farmer friend Peter proceeded to explain... Peter told me that some Kiwi farmers discovered that when they played calm classic music in the milking sheds the cows produced more milk. But when they played loud hard rock music the cows became agitated and milk production went way down ! HAHA sounds like New Zealand has Cultured Cows as well as clever farmers,to make such an observation !

Forgotten World Highway

by mooloo_thing

If you like green countryside the 'Forgotten World Highway' is definately well worth the journey, although we had a pretty crap day it was still a good trip - although quiet long when you factor in having to get back home from Stratford.

We started out at Taumarunui at about 10AM and began our journey on the highway - firstly filling up with gas (the signs saying no gas for 150KM - they are not ***ting you at all, you are going to the middle of nowhere).

Our journey began in fog for around half an hour -still a nice drive so can’t complain too much! Now to warn you, there are signs saying there are lookouts and stuff and we are sure they pointed to nowhere - might pay to try and pick up a map or something to find out where these places actually are.

We both agreed that the non-sealed section of the ’highway’ was the best part of our journey, including the 180Metre single laned Moki tunnel which is just drilled straight through the middle of a hill basically.

Don’t be afraid to go off down some of the side roads, we went down a couple and found a small waterfall and a train tunnel - both of which were worth the extra effort, although if you have been driving for more than 10 mins or so down a random road, unless you have a map it might pay to turn around, who knows where you will end up?!?!?!

All in all for the amount of time it took I will not be going back to do it again in a hurry, but it was some amazing scenery and I am glad I have crossed it off my list of things to do in NZ!