Last week TRM listed 50 beaut reasons to visit and stay in Turangi. Almost unforgivably, we missed an important one! The location advantages! It’s all about location, location, location!

Thank you to the inmates who pointed this out. Recently, during the summer tourist season, TRM had several overseas guests who chose Turangi due to the strategic locational advantages. They tested and proved our claim that it “is halfway to everywhere”.

After five years of posting these reasons to stay at Turangi, surprisingly, it was not spotted on previous updates.

Guests from overseas who wanted a good look around the North Island used Turangi as their base camp for a week or so, as it is geographically located in the middle of the island requiring only an easy return trip to everywhere else. Apart from the far north, they travelled each day to a different tourist attraction and even managed a loop route back again.

From Turangi, on our recommendation, they managed easy day trips to Waitomo Caves, Rotorua for the Whaka forest biking trails and rafting over a waterfall, Napier because it is there, Taranaki via the forgotten highway, Matamata for some other reason, Taupo for Huka Falls, Pamerston North for the rugby museum, Whakapapa for Mt. Ruapehu walking trails, Lake Taupo to see our Wanaka Tree, etc.

Rather than have to up sticks and shift camp each day, it was more relaxing to stay based in the most central spot and fan out to all the other locations. What a sensible plan. They were not the only ones.

I should have remembered this as in fact, we used the same tactics visiting the UK. The last time I was granted leave from the laundry, in 2014, we based ourselves in one central location for three weeks, in a delightful historic pub at St. Albans north of London, and caught trains each day to wherever we wanted to go. In retrospect, it was far more economic and efficient and less stressful than trying to drive everywhere.

That was when I discovered the Worshipful Company of Launderers and had SWMBO measured up for her sarcophagus – see photos…

Unfortunately, whilst tourists cannot do that in NZ, they can apply the same logic and base themselves in a pleasant, scenic central location.