Activity Summary
Wednesday 22nd February - Day 174
Unexpected Wellington day
Walk around Hutt
Dinner with Nicola’s friend Meg
Thursday 23rd February - Day 175
Drive to New Plymouth
Lunch stopover in Lake a Virginia reserve (Palmy North)
Friday 24th February - Day 176
Lake Mangamahoe with Mt Taranaki view
New Plymouth day
Pukekura park
New Plymouth coastal walkway
Paritutu rock
The Kitchen Table cafe
Saturday 25th February - Day 177
Caffe Windsor (Inglewood)
North Egmont national park walk
Sunday 26th February - Day 178
Luke's desire to hike Mt Taranaki fails
Hike: Wilkies Pools & Dawson Falls
Drive to Tongariro National Park
Summary
New Plymouth / small towns nearby
Absolutely nothing of value to do here really apart from see the city, walk around a little then take off. Arguably the small towns with their cafes are better as it was a lot easier to park, but they also offer very little entertainment.
Happy to have seen it but won’t be on any best of highlights.
Egmont National Park
Luke really likes the National park. Mt Taranaki, with its incredible lonely mountain type vibe and almost perfect circle forming the centre of the NP is absolutely fascinating. The lower walks are enjoyable with access to them from a number of points around the mountain.
Sadly Luke wasn’t able to hike Mt Taranaki (despite waiting 3 days for the weather to clear) but it was still well worth the visit. This also allowed the weather in Tongariro to sort its shit out so overall it was the right call.
Accommodation
New Plymouth - Durham Lake Holiday Park
Number of nights - 3
Price per night per person - £18
Good job we upgraded to a cabin because the wind was crazy strong and pretty wet a lot of the time. Don’t think the tent really would have held it together. Nicola even got a heater so she was pretty much in heaven.
The campsite itself was very basic. Bathrooms were more akin to portable set ups, a mismatch of DIY ply board and pipes forming most of the buildings.
The cabin followed a similar pattern but we didn’t care as it was inside and comfortable enough. Even had NZ terrestrial TV.
The kitchen sucked, an electric 2 hob jobby and a microwave forming the tools available to cook. Thankfully we never had to compete with anyone.
Diary
It was pretty rough the both of us sleeping in the car. Nicola had made the car work in her favour when alone by bending her legs to avoid kicking in the boot door. With both of us in the car however there was absolutely zero room for either of us to do this without pulling off unappreciated UFC submission moves in the middle of night. So it was a night of tossing and turning on one point (credit to Nicola she actually managed to do this) before getting numb, waking up, turning to a fresher side and then repeating the whole process. This seemed to work a bit better for Luke than Nicola who barely slept.
Nicola left the car first and then Luke had the space to properly spread so fell fast asleep again. Certainly helped him get through the rest of the day.
As we hadn’t planned to be in Wellington until later in the evening we had absolutely nothing planned and were in no mood to seize the day. We pottered around the campsite for a while, repacking the car from the chaos of dumping stuff under it and in the front seats from the night before and decided a walk in the nearby city of Hutt would do us good.
We drove, parked up and stretched our legs around the city which had absolutely nothing of note other than allowing Luke to restock his instant coffee for the rest of NZ.
From our existing Wellington accommodation booking we had a cabin upgrade for the night which Nicola was very excited about. A bit of logistical annoyance meant we couldn’t get through the gate to the campsite or check in until 3pm which wouldn't have been much of a problem on a normal day but Nicola was so excited about crawling into bed once 2pm hit. As she was forced to wait however the TV room with her duvet and pillow had to suffice. Comfortable enough apart from some absolute crackhead weirdos coming in while Luke was watching the last hunger games film to sit down for 2 minutes, talk loudly to themselves so he couldn’t hear the TV and then leave with the door wide open to freeze out the room. People are the worst.
With the film done we checked into our room and Nicola continued her rest in a bit more comfort while Luke sorted laundry and had a much needed grooming session for himself. The unkempt mountain man look couldn’t be blamed on these activities in a few days once no more after all.
We spent our evening with one of Nicola’s friends, Meg, who had been living in Wellington for a while and treated us to an absolute slap up prawn orzo meal with a wonderful bottle of Alexander (Martinborough) Pinot Noir rose which Luke had a lot of enjoyment from. Our apple crumble offering felt light in comparison but it was a lovely evening. Luke deliberately didn’t take a bottle of wine and said he wouldn’t drink so could drive, but was very quick to accept the very kind offer from Meg - Nicola knew all along his statement would amount to nothing if there was wine on the table.
Nicola had a pretty good night's sleep this time. A lovely double bed all to herself lovingly offered to her by Luke. Granted this time the cabin was large enough to have two bunk beds so he was comfortable enough on a bottom bunk opposite so he was plenty comfortable.
Leaving as late as we could, we started driving to New Plymouth. The original plan was to go to Tongariro first but Luke had again been scouring weather apps for a week prior to try and work out what the best schedule would be for us, seeing as we left North Island early in order to get good weather for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It would have sucked so much if we again failed to get 1 goddamn decent day for it in a 7 day window. The toss up for him was hiking Mt Taranaki & Tongariro - Tongariro won out and so into the crap weather for New Plymouth it was.
We had a lunch stopover in the Lake Virginia park reserve in Palmerston North. Nicola became queen of the quackers with her cucumber feedings. We stretched our legs a bit around the park and the aviary before carrying on the drive.
It was a long drive but made much more entertaining by listening to ‘Wilding - Isabella Tree’. Luke really got into this wholesome book about rewilding the Knepp Estate in the UK - would definitely recommend it.
Once we arrived and checked into our cabin we pretty much didn’t leave apart from going to cook. We were sheltered from the wind and rain that was picking up and we’re perfectly happy sitting and watching trash NZ TV all evening.
It wasn’t expected to be a particularly nice day so we decided to go to New Plymouth, expecting to be able to find shelter should we need it.
The morning was pretty clear so we made the short stopover at Lake Mangamahoe that had a really nice view of Mt Taranaki in the background. The low cloud cover was pretty cool but at no point throughout our time here did that dissipate sadly.
Once in New Plymouth we had a walk around the Pukekura park and then went over to the New Plymouth coastal walkway thinking it would be a decent place for our packed lunch. The car park had to be paid for and the views of a coastal barrier weren’t ideal so we sacked off that idea and went to Paritutu rock.
The rock wasn’t much better but as the rain started and we were hungry we didn’t move from the car.
The rain pretty much ended any weak desire we had of walking through New Plymouth so we drove through the rest of it, citing we’ve now seen it and then left.
Nicola had found a cafe, The Kitchen Table, next to countdown so we opted to kill two birds with one stone. Food shop and hide away from the weather. We spent a couple hours here in full boring admin mode - uploading the glam photos of our car Chopper, our tent and the camping gear to the harsh world of Facebook marketplace (TradeMe was sacked off as they wanted to charge us for listing).
Luke then had the sole pleasure of having to deal with these interested people, 90% of which were absolute fucktards. Will save that summary for Auckland.
Once back at the cabin we cooked and chilled.
We spent the morning and early afternoon at Caffe Windsor in a small nearby town called Inglewood to carry on researching and wait for the weather to improve. We did actually spend some money on lunch here rather than just hot drinks, in part to justify our long stay here and a way to cheer us up from the lows we were feeling from the stress of getting to the North Island and then the weather just constantly being so shit.
First world problems we know but our energy levels since leaving Franz Josef had been on a massive downward spiral. Nicola was feeling well and truly done with NZ since then while Luke was clinging on to some last gasp hopes of some epic hikes in North Island.
We left the cafe early afternoon to go for a walk in the north side of the Egmont National park. We first stopped off at the DOC visitor centre so Luke could ask about hiking Mt Taranaki, where he was told the weather was obviously not great and had even snowed. So with the knowledge that crampons may have to be used he was consigned to the fact he would likely not summit it - but would try nonetheless anyway the next day.
We had a nice walk around the short trails around that side of the National park. Some were pretty overgrown and in the wet had become more like bogs but we did find one loop that was manageable. Nicola was lacking energy so Luke did run off ahead at one point to the ‘viewpoint’ ahead knowing full well there would be nothing to see as we were already in full surrounding cloud cover but like a puppy burning off energy he ran off and back before continuing round.
Back at the cabin we had an evening with some of the Manuka Facemasks Luke got for V day and again did very little else.
Luke’s patient and overly optimistic wait for the weather to clear did not materialise of course. He knew deep down when the rain was lashing down all evening it wasn’t going to happen but it was only once parked up at the start and faced with the incredibly low cloud cover that meant he couldn’t see more than 10m in front did he finally accept defeat.
But this did mean he could join Nicola on her walks around the East side of Egmont NP.
We had a nice walk down from the Stratford Plateau car park, past a pretty nice waterfall and along well managed paths down to Wilkies Pools & Dawson Falls. The path was pretty waterlogged in points which made for some acrobatics to avoid soaking feet but otherwise it was a nice few hours.
The cloud cover had cleared a fair amount by the end of our walk so we could see out from the viewpoint at the car park but Taranaki was still well and truly coated. Luke just had to accept his FOMO and move on.
We drove to our campsite near the Tongariro National Park in a small town called Raetihi and pitched the tent for the very last time. We got talking to a few people in the kitchen campsite before turning in.
Comments