Sunday 2nd October
We got up fairly early to face our final morning with the hordes of rowers. Fortunately, we'd missed most of the chaos by the time we got to the kitchen and the parents were just left packing up. After breakfast, we tried in vain to get the tent dry after another night of heavy rain but had to give up and accept that it would be going away wet. We departed Wanganui pretty content that we had done everything we wanted to do there, which was good as we wouldn't be visiting again. Our destination for the day was New Plymouth, a town we had visited before for a couple of days on our drive south from Kaitaia. We hadn't really got a lot done on our precious visit, so had decided on a return for a few days. First though, we had to drive round Mt.Taranaki. Rather than return the way we'd come 3 months previously, we drove the coastal route known as Surf Highway 45. Obviously it's got that name because the coast it runs along is good for surfing but you can never really see the coast from the road due to it being set back by at least a kilometre the whole way round. We could see Mt.Taranaki however, which had a slightly heavier dusting of snow from the last time we'd seen it. For those who can't remember, Mt.Taranaki is the conical volcano all on its lonesome, looming over New Plymouth, ready to explode is a sea of lava and ash at any moment. At the junction with the surf highway, we passed through the town of Harewa, which was another town we had planned to wwoof in and had agreed to work at a families house. Whilst in Wanganui though we cancelled on them as we decided it wasn't where we really wanted to stay for too long, After Harewa, we followed the highway most of the way round until we passed a turning to Cape Egmont and its lighthouse. Our map showed a turning just after which went in the same direction, so rather than turn round we opted for that one. When we got to the end of the road where it met the sea we found that we could, not reach the lighthouse and the road turned right rather than left. A bit peeved at New Zealand’s awful road signage we didn't bother going back and followed the road right instead, eventually stumbling across another lighthouse that we thought we'd take a photo of and pass off as Cape Egmont lighthouse anyway as nobody reading knows the difference. This was also our only real glimpse of the coast the whole way round but we could see why the road had earned its nickname. There were endless white tipped waves crashing against the black sand beaches just down from the roads edge. After that slight detour we continued on our way until we reached New Plymouth. On our first visit to the town, winter was just beginning and we spent a couple of freezing nights wrapped up in our tent. This time around though it was early spring and despite some cloud closing in and shield Taranaki from view it was a very pleasant Sunday. We had booked in at the same campsite we'd stayed in before and had even splashed out on a cabin this time round. We'd seen the weather forecast for the coming days and it didn't really sound like it would be fun sitting out in our tent with the sky falling. We found the site from memory pretty easily and checked in to our room. Once everything was in the room we paid a visit to the supermarket to stock up on 4 days worth of food and goodies. We found a few bargains (and some ice cream) and then returned to the campsite for a relaxing afternoon. Compared to the Wanganui campsite, the New Plymouth one was dead as a dodo, so we decided to make use of the free heated swimming pool while we had a chance and the weather was nice. We got a few laps in and then freshened up for dinner. To pass the time while our potatoes were baking in the over, Charlotte and I attempted to teach ourselves Cribbage with a pack of cars and a board we had picked up from a shop a few days beforehand. We actually got to grips with it fairly easy but didn't get the chance to complete a whole game as dinner needed to be tended to, but we had finally found a 2 player card game that was worth it and it would help keep us entertained during the long summer evenings. Overall dinner took us about 3 hours to cook, despite it being just jacket potatoes, beans and sausages. The hobs and oven in the kitchen were useless and didn't seem to heat up much but we got there eventually. We were keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would hold out long enough for us to get out and explore the next day.
Monday 3rd October
Overnight we heard a massive downpour thrumming on the roof of our cabin and we were pleased, as it justified the decision to splash out on a proper room whilst we were in New Plymouth. We were up bright and early but didn't get out until gone 9 thanks to a combination of things. We'd also found out that the fridge in the room hadn't been on the whole night and it had contained 8 sausages and a whole bottle of milk. We were reluctant to eat the sausages but risked the milk as we had cereal for breakfast. Despite being slightly warm the milk was fine. After breakfast, we put together a simple packed lunch and headed out towards town, as I've mentioned, we'd visited New Plymouth and stayed in the same campsite. We repeated our walk down on to Fitzroy beach and followed the coastal walkway all the way in to town, just like on our first visit. This time though, we carried straight on through and made our way to Peritutu Rock, which is a tall, climb able rock, just past the port area. Our lonely planet book had said it was a 20 minute scramble to the top but we didn't expect it to be as harsh a climb as it was. We got about halfway on steep steps and then passed a sign saying that the path got pretty steep and we would require good footwear. We had the good footwear, but the path was almost a climb up a sheer cliff. There was a chain link railing but it hung so loose between its poles that by the time it took your strain you'd be plummeting down the side of the rock. Obviously people have completed it and complete it all the time but, when we stopped to let a few people clamber down, rain started pouring and we were reluctant to go any further. There had been thunder forecast too, which made us think twice. The Lightning danger and the slipperiness of the rocks made us turn back down. We did take a few moments to appreciate the view from where we were though and despite the low romain clouds we did have a birds eye view of New Plymouth. The climb back down to where the stairs began was hard enough, so we dreaded to think what coming down from the summit would have been like, particularly with slippery rocks. We paused for breath when we reached the steps, to take stock and appreciate life. Typically, by the time we were down and walking back towards town, we looked backed and there was nothing but blue sky all around. We didn't consider returning for very long, just the stairs were hard enough!. We rejoined the coastal path and walked back in to New Plymouth and arrived at the visitor centre just as the heavens opened again. As a treat for all the walking we decided to grab a drink from a café, so hunted down one that was highly praised in Lonely Planet. Despite having the name “Chaos”, it wasn't particularly, there were a few free seats dotted around the place despite it being the lunch time peak. We ordered an iced coffee and an iced chocolate, as well as a decadent caramel and coffee slice. We were pleasantly surprised by the drinks when they arrived as my iced chocolate came with an entire chocolate bar rested on top and Charlotte's had 2 large nutty chocolate squares. The drinks were good and the caramel and coffee slice was delicious, although we were pleased we had only ordered one to share, as a whole one would have been too rich for just one of us to eat. After the café, we wandered around town for a while, picking up some books for Charlotte to read and obtaining a pin badge, something that had eluded us on our previous visit. The day was getting on and we still had a fair walk back to the campsite, so we walked back to the prom and found a bench just beyond the crashing waves to enjoy our slightly late lunch of peanut butter rolls. The showers had abated for now and with the sun on our backs walking home, it had turned in to a really warm, pleasant day. We'd done a lot of walking and when we got back we were both pretty weary. After the fridge debacle though, we needed to think of something different for dinner and decided to pop out to the supermarket to pick something up. We came back with something I'd been after for weeks, big, juicy burgers, as we needed cheering up after loosing so many sausages. With around 2 hours of sunshine left Charlotte and I sat out in a bench getting to grips with the odd rules of Cribbage and eventually completing our first full game. Charlotte triumphed by reaching the target score of 121 first but I reckon it was down to some dodgy dealing in her late. Once the sun had dipped below the campsite trees it got a bit chilly, so we gathered up our dinner items and made a break for the kitchen to cook up our burgers. We still had a long wait though, as our homemade chips took decades to cook in the weakest oven of all time. It was the best dinner ever though and followed up by a nice big bowl of ice cream.
Tuesday 4th October
It was finally time for us to pay a visit to Egmont National Park, home to Mt.Egmont, or more commonly Mt.Taranaki. Charlotte and I had considered walking the summit track which we read should take between 8-12 hours. When we saw the weather and took in to account the fact the peak was still covered in snow and ice, it didn't seem like the best option. The book we had in walks in the area also said we would need crampons near the top if there was snow and as we were fresh out of them we had a look for other options. After breakfast, we hopped in the car and out on the highway towards the town of Stratford. Just before reaching the town, we took a sharp right and wound our way up the slopes of Taranaki, entering the national park and reaching the Dawson Falls visitor centre. There were a couple of walks we'd picked out that we wanted to do, so we found a spot to park amongst the hoards of cars. The first walk was called Kepuni Loop track, which took us through the native bush and its waterlogged pathways to Dawson Falls. The falls was an 18 metre high roaring torrent of white water that landed in a small pool at the bottom right next to where an offshoot of the pathway led us. As waterfalls go it wasn't as grand as Niagara or as tall as the Angel but it was quite an impressive sight and sound. Back up the offshoot and along we reached a viewing platform that gave us a different vantage point to appreciate nature and gravity. The rest of the walk meandered through the bush, crossing the access road we had driven along to the visitor centre before plopping us back right next to our car. The only thing was, we didn't want to be by the car, so headed off towards the second walk. This track was called Wilkies Pools track and started off as a very easy ascent up a honeycombed boardwalk until it reached the pools that give the walk its name. From here though it became rather tricky. To complete the loop we had to cross the pools and its raging river via a number of slippery, half submerged rocks that had been spewed from Mt.Taranaki 20,000 years earlier. In fact we read that the whole riverbed was a lava flow from the same time, it had cooled significantly in that time though. To make matters worse there had been a significant amount of rainfall in the past few days which contributed to the output of the river. We were watched by some maintenance workers as we attempted to cross the swollen river but fortunately we managed to spare them any hilarity and made it across dry. We expected that to be the only river crossing but we still had 3 or 4 more to contend with. The majority were smaller but that didn't mean they were any easier than the first big one. One was surrounded by waterlogged banks which made any attempt to get grip or balance nigh on impossible and I ended up with one soaked foot. Another crossing was right at the base of a waterfall that was clearly faster than it usually was thanks to the rain. This one took me a while to pluck up the courage to jump as there were no convenient trees to hold on to for that extra bit of support. What hasn't helped for me was my earlier fall into a river up north not long after arriving in New Zealand, so I really didn't want a repeat of that. The last river crossing was further down the first river we'd crossed. It was very fast and there weren't any obvious places to cross with most rocks just submerged by the torrent of water. Charlotte found a safe route across though and we were relieved to have crossed the final part without any injury. We made it back to the car with just one soaked foot, which we deemed a success. The walks combined had taken us around 3 hours so it was past lunch when we sat down on a bench overlooking the farms of Taranaki (Taranaki being the name of the state) underneath a canopy of ominous grey clouds. Unfortunately, the big volcano had kept himself hidden all day behind a veil of clouds, so we didn't really get a chance to appreciate where we were. We did get a brief appearance on our drive home but by the time we hit the suburbs of New Plymouth the clouds had rolled in again and it was gone for yet another day. We returned to the campsite and spent the late afternoon attempting the play some more Cribbage before chowing down on our nice and easy vegetable stir fry.
Wednesday 5th October
The weather overnight justified us splashing out on a cabin 10 fold. The rain poured and the winds howled, the only thing we didn't get was thunder and lightning. When we awoke it was a sunny day but the wind was still blowing a gale. We weren't in a rush to get out as we had done most of what we wanted to do in New Plymouth over the two times we had visited. In order to get out and about though, we did follow the coastal pathway back in to town to have one final look around. It was a blustery walk and we got the occasional spray from the waves crashing over the rocks along the beaches. It was a pleasant walk that we would both happily do every day if we lived there. When we arrived in town we hunted down New Plymouth cathedral, which holds the accolade of being New Zealand's oldest stone church. It seemed an unorthodox cathedral as there was no towering spire but there was a stubby bell tower down one of the sides. After the cathedral we walked the short distance to Pukekura Park, which was a large swathe of green amongst the otherwise concrete jungle of New Plymouth. We spent a good couple of hours walking around Pukekure and the adjacent Brooklands Park. After passing a man made waterfall we hummed and harred whether or not to have an ice cream from the park café but decided against it seeing as we had some back at the campsite. Pukekura park had a distinct Japanese feel to it, with a tori gate amongst the plants and bridges the same colour as the tori gates spanning the small but long lake. We passed through Pukekura into Brooklands, walking through a Kauri tree grove. The Kauri’s were nowhere near as impressive as they had been up in the far north and they were hard to pick out amongst all the other trees swaying in the strong wind. After the grove we emerged into a field that had what seemed like a tiny brick house plonked right in the middle of it. We found out from the plaque next door that it was the remnants of a chimney of a house that had belonged to a former Royal Navy officer that had arrived in New Plymouth on one of the many ships that had sailed there during the 1800’s. From there we carried in further and did actually find a tree that was worth a wow. A 2000 year old Puriri tree that stood tall but slightly battered and bruised. It had a hole running right through the trunk that a plaque said was caused by tree surgery to remove a damaged lower limb. After the Puriri tree we tried to hunt down a huge Ginko tree but the effort proved fruitless as it wasn't signposted and there were trees everywhere. We sat and had a lone sandwich each by a lake that contained a sculpture representing New Zealand. The Maori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, which means “Land of the long white cloud” (which considering the recent weather we'd been having is very apt). The sculpture was four blocks of white clouds rising from the surface of the pond, which was nice. After a quick bite to eat and the sculpture, we had seen most of what the parks had to offer and we had really enjoyed our trip to town. On the way back through, we stopped by Chaos Café once again and decided to treat ourselves. We'd read the hot chocolate was well worth it so we ordered one of them each and yet another decadent cake, except one each this time. The sticky caramel slice and the boysenberry tart we had had were delicious but the hot chocolate turned out to be a bit of a let down. It came with a chocolate bar laid across it, like the iced chocolate I'd had previously had done, so we did think we should have dipped the chocolate in the hot drink and let it melt but we ate it far too quickly to even consider it. With that, New Plymouth for us was done and dusted. We walked back along the choppy coast and spent the afternoon deliberating our next move over a cup of tea, some Cribbage and a book each (we really are turning in to a couple of pensioners!). We had a couple of options for where to go next but decided we'd make up our minds when we turned the ignition on to leave the next day. After finally getting round to throwing away the gone off sausages, we finished off the burgers we'd bought two days previously and had them with some vegetables and rice.
No comments:
Post a Comment