Taranaki - 1

Our trip to Taranaki was quite eventful. Our journey down was the worst weather we have ever travelled in. It rained all the way, that’s about 4 hours. It wasn’t always heavy rain but none the less the blue skies did not appear for us at all. Which really is unusual.

We were held up in traffic for about 30 minutes just before the first tunnel on the route down to Taranaki. There were two cars in front of us with quite a big space between then, the the road bent around to the left. A long artic lorry was parked on the other side of the road facing in our direction and there was a long queue behind us when we eventually moved off. One of the drivers behind us got out of his car a went to see what was happening. When he came back he stopped at our car and explained that a motorcycle had hit the artic lorry. He also explained that the motorcyclist was not moving. Oh dear! Then another man came by and said he was now moving, thank goodness. Unlike in England when an accident happens everyone stays where they are, in this county members of the pubic seem to get involved. Sometimes they even move bits of the damaged vehicles out of the way. In this case nothing needed to be moved but the occupants of the cars in front of us started directing the traffic around the cyclist. That is why we were only delayed by 30 minutes and I should add that no emergency vehicles arrived during that time. About 30 minutes after we had left the scene we did see an ambulance and police cars coming in our direction. Sadly the motorcyclist had died, very sad.
The fatal accident had only happened just minutes in front of us and that was about 10 minutes after the motorcyclist had overtaken us which I must add he was not driving dangerously. Life is so precious!