Taranaki

Weekend of October 13-14

Sarah, Carsten, Erik and I took a weekend trip up to New Plymouth/Taranaki a couple weekends ago. We skipped out of work a little bit early on Friday to try to beat some of the traffic... (Taranaki is a 4-5 hour drive northwest of Wellington, on the west coast)

On the way up, we stopped for dinner in Wanganui (pop. 43,000). There weren't many restaurants near the highway, so we opted for one of the first places we saw - the local RSA (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association), which is very much like our VFW. It was a huge open hall with lots of tables, average food, and cheap beer! I don't have any pictures of our dinner or the place (didn't feel right), but it was a good dose of rural NZ. I ordered steak and potatoes. It was a great change up from city life in Wellington and the more touristy areas we've seen.

We arrived relatively late on Friday, so the evening was pretty low key.

Saturday started with Erik and Carsten getting up early to watch rugby, but discovering it wasn't on until the next morning (bummer, huh guys?). After breakfast we took a trip through "downtown" New Plymouth. We spent a couple hours at Pukekura Park and Brooklands Park. Pukekura is regarded as the best urban park in New Zealand. It definitely felt like we were far from civilization. This park also hosts the annual rhododendron festival in late October. We just missed the festival (which was nice since the hotels in the area are booked while it is happening), but we did get to see lots of plants in bloom. Unfortunately it rained a bit while we were walking around, but it wasn't too bad.

A picture from Pukekura Park -
My favorite part of the park was the children's zoo. It was free and they had all kinds of animals wandering around in their pens.

No, this is not a very exciting picture, but these little chicks were darling, so I included the photo...

We spent the day driving around Taranaki (its Maori name) aka Mt Egmont (its English name) - both are official names. We used the vaguest map possible (the one from the Lonely Planet guide book), but we managed just fine. It was pretty entertaining to try to figure out where we were on a map that was lacking things such as road names, and roads for that matter. It was nice to just drive with no real destination and take in the scenery.

Unlike the other areas of NZ we have been too, Taranaki is extremely green farmland, with just a few rolling hills. It is also the dairy capital of NZ - there were black & white cows everywhere! I swear no matter what time of day it was, they were always lining up to be milked.

Once the morning rain moved out, the sky was quite clear everywhere except at the mountain top... fortunately the clouds parted just long enough for me to take this picture. We had literally 2 minutes of clarity at the mountain top during the entire day!
During our drive around we stopped in Egmont Nat'l Park for a brief visit to Dawson's Falls, which was about a 5 minute walk from where we parked. It was kind of strange to be rewarded with a beautiful sight after such little effort on our part...

On Saturday night we checked out New Plymouth and its culinary offerings. We settled on El Condor, which billed itself as an Argentinian restaurant, however they served entrees such as blue cheese ravioli and a meat lover's pizza... but it was BYO wine, so we let that go! The food was delicious - especially the empanadas we had for an appetizer (pretty much the only Argentinian item on the entire menu).

After dinner we went to a couple bars, and ended up spending most of our time at a Celtic pub... they had a ton of Guinness coasters on hand, and one way or another, we ended up playing Guinness coaster memory... random, I know, but we weren't about to give up our seats on GUINNESS couches, by the fire mind you. It was very, very entertaining.

Here is a picture of Sarah taking a picture of Carsten with a pair of seals he had just matched - laughable!
On Sunday morning we went to KFC for breakfast - it's not as good as KFC back home though - and then were more or less on our way back to Wellington. However before we left, Erik and I decided that we wanted to check out Paritutu, which means 'rising precipice' - see below (154 meters tall) - and is just outside of New Plymouth on the waterfront:


I am not sure that the picture above does the "hill" justice, but it was incredibly steep and a lot of fun scrambling to the top. We happened to time it just right - a few minutes before we began it was raining, and a few minutes after we finished, it started to rain again...

Here is a picture of the path - again, it was incredibly steep... naturally this was fine on the way up, but when we were coming down I was getting quite nervous - it completely drops off over the edge to the right - add in the wind and you have quite the adrenaline rush...
[The cable in this picture is to help you pull your way up - it was quite vertical at this part]

The views from the top were magnificent. Looking out over the ocean we could see the Sugar Loaf Islands, which are eroded volcanic remnants (which is also what Paritutu is). Here is a picture of where I should have been able to see Mt. Taranaki in the distance. As you can see from this picture, the volcano is in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing how flat the area is, and then all of the sudden, there it is...
This is a picture looking South from the top. As you can tell from the water, it was a really, really windy day. It was actually a bit scary up there because if you weren't paying attention, the wind could really blow you around. We took some video while we were up there as well - hopefully I will be able to post that some time soon.

That's about it from Taranaki - it was a fun-filled weekend. It's amazing how much the landscape changes here from place to place...

Next post - my first visit to the South Island - Christchurch to be specific.

Keep in touch everyone!