A swing bridge and a blue spring

The small town of Arapuni is next to the Arapuni Dam, a hydroelectric dam commissioned in 1929.   A suspension bridge overlooks the Arapuni Power Station, the largest on the Waikato River.   I left my camera in the car as I expected the bridge to have a bit more swing to it and didn't want to risk dropping it.  Only took a few shots with my phone.

 

The bush lining the river was beautiful.

One of the highlights of our trip to the Waikato was Te Waihou Walkway and the Blue Spring.  The beautiful clear blue-green of the spring water is due to its purity as particles are removed during its journey through underground aquifers.  The spring supplies around 70% of this country's bottled water.  (I had no idea about that.  I don't buy bottled water so had never thought about where it comes from.)

 

The water in the stream looks to be barely moving but in fact flows at a rate of 42m³  a minute and could fill a six lane 25 metre pool in just over 12 minutes.    The water is a constant 11℃ (32F) all year round.

 

I'm so glad we went for our mini holiday when we did.  If we had planned to go now or next week we'd have to cancel due to the recent outbreak of Covid.  The announcement came on Tuesday night, of a return to Level 3 for the Auckland area and Level 2 for the rest of the country.  We were in a L2 area but to return home had to pass through Auckland and the roadblock checkpoints.  Getting in to Auckland was relatively easy, only took half an hour.  Getting out at the northern boundary was another story, 4.5 to 5 hours, lost track of the time.  The checkpoints are to keep people other than residents out of Auckland where the outbreak is and to stop Aucklanders escaping to their holiday homes or the beaches and the risk of them carrying the virus out of the city. 

The traffic north of the city was very light, don't think I've ever seen this stretch of road with no traffic.

But it didn't take long for it to back up closer to the roadblocks.  We felt so sorry for the truckies.  South of Auckland they drafted them off and let them go on their way before the roadblock but in the north they had to sit there with the rest of us. That was on Wednesday, I hope they have developed a better method by now.

I also felt sorry for the police and army personnel who were manning the checkpoints.  They must have copped a few earfuls from disgruntled motorists.