I spent a rainy night on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana, the North Island's deepest lake and one of the world's largest landslide dammed lakes. Fortunately the student camper fared well, repelling both wind and rain effectively. In the morning I hiked up to the top of the 600 m-high Panekiri Bluff, to get a view of the incredible landslide that dammed the lake only 2200 short years ago, supposedly by a subduction zone earthquake. While the bottom of the landslide broke up into large blocks and traveled several kilometers, the top of the landslide slid about 1.5 kilometers and stopped more or less as one large mass. The landslide dammed the valley upstream to a depth of 250 m to create a 54 km2 lake that has remained stable to date.
I then went on the short Onepoto Caves walk, a short track through a fascinating area of talus caves, slots, and tomos on the landslide. Although none of the caves were too long, there was about a dozen that made nice throughtrips up to about 80 m in length beneath the track and a few with multi-levels to explore. I still think New Zealand has huge unrecognized talus cave potential. There were also some nice overhangs beneath enormous boulders with great views of the lake looking back towards Panekiri Bluffs (frontispiece).
Carrying on I then drove around the lake to take the back way to Rotorua, stopping for the occasional waterfall or view of the lake. The sub-horizontal mudstone layers have a tendency to create nice wide fanning waterfalls. I went for a quick paddle at the north end of the lake but the wind was strong so the conditions were not really that great. The backroads north of the lake passed through some lush rainforest, occasionally broken by a few Maori settlements. I was impressed at the number of horses set loose to graze on the road- presumably they know better than to wander off through the bush! It was an enjoyable drive on to Rotorua, then less so on the main highways to Auckland.
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