(Above is a happy American bike packer – a new ‘category’ of tourist that Taupo need to cater for.  The best way we can encourage them is to link Taupo bike trails with the Waikato River Trails and other tracks south of Tongariro National Park.  He must have been lost as we found him on the Tongariro River Trail enjoying the riverside track)

Yesterday the TRM Daily Report went all “political” promoting more bike trails in this region.  With good reason.  A local proposal to develop a new sports stadium was being touted as the cure to fix Turangi’s future.  Others immediately appealed to us as that proposal would add little to secure Turangi’s future as a tourist town.  So we jumped back on the bandwagon to promote our bike trail.

For the last ten years the local council interests (like “Go Tongariro”) have dithered over this Turangi to Taupo bike trail without ever taking the lead and steering it.  So we could not resist the opportunity to add to the submissions requested by Taupo Council towards their ten year planning programme.  If you missed it, click on yesterday’s date – 9 April – to read the bike trail proposal and if you agree you can “Copy & save” and submit it to Council.  Thank you so much in anticipation…

Yesterday TRM had a visitor from another office Taupo Council – known as “Enterprise Great Lake Taupo”.  We felt quite honoured.  In the last 14 years this was the first time we had them call on TRM.  We waited for a complaint about main road directional signage for tourists or whatever but no, nothing but nice encouraging comments!

Their “Turangi Business Advisor”, a new position occupied by Averil Nauman, just wanted to introduce herself and discuss tourist business.  She was investigating what makes this town tick.

Naturally we could not contain ourselves.  By the time she left we made sure she was right up to date with all prospective bike trails in this region. We also slipped in the only undergound power station in the North Island waiting for tourists and the reopening of the Turangi museum just in case she had not heard of them too, just in case…  Someone should have warned her?  These were followed up by several huge emails to provide a full specification of Turangi’s wish list.

But despite our enthusiastic passionate onslaught promotional “more bike trails linking Turangi with Taupo and Whakapapa to secure the future” stuff, she did manage to slip in one probing question – “Why do tourists come to Turangi?”  She was just testing us.  Fancy even asking!  So I hope that qualifies this as a fishing report?

So the following brief video is just for her.