Activity Summary
Friday 16th December - Day 106 (continued)
Drive to Palmerston North
Himatangi beach stroll
Saturday 17th December - Day 107
Eketahuna cliff walk
Pukaha national wildlife centre
Sunday 18th December - Day 108
Whanganui town
Queens park memorial & Whanganui river walk
Durie Hill Memorial tower
Lake Virginia
Monday 19th December - Day 109
Manawatu gorge walk (Luke)
Tawa loop track & east end of gorge track (Nicola)
Quirky cafe chill for Nicola
Sunset on Himatangi beach
Tuesday 20th December - Day 110
Upper Turitea Green Corridor
Library research day
Wednesday 21st December - Day 111
Palmerston North river & park walk
New Zealand rugby museum
Summary
Himatangi
Very little to do here and the beach isn’t worth the lengthy drive out if not staying in the area or it’s easy to get to. But we very much liked the Top10.
Palmerston North
Much like the cities in North Island, there really wasn’t anything special about the place or stand out things to do here but proved useful for our research day or to just have a short wander around.
Whanganui
Worth a short stop over if making your way past it and over to New Plymouth / the middle of North Island but nothing really of note here.
Accommodation
Himatangi - Top10
Number of nights - 6
Price per night per person - £16
On the face of it this is not an overly appealing campsite. There were a lot of permanent residents in campervans / fixed campers which we feel takes away from the appeal of a campsite.
Once past this impulse view however we loved the place. The TV room was amazing and we spent every evening in there by ourselves watching movies and chilling. The owners were lovely and it was honestly the cleanest place we have stayed in - everything just sparkled. The kitchen was great to cook in, with utensils so we didn’t have to fuss about our own and a BBQ for jazzing things up. The WIFI and mobile data signal was decent enough to get by.
The place really grew on us and we were happy to have decided to spend a lot of time there.
Diary
[Continued]
Our next location near Palmerston North was a Top10 campsite but we would not be camping for the first time in a while as we were sick to death of the constant rain. We had rushed through parts of North Island in Coromandel, Rotorua & Taupo simply because the weather wouldn’t hold up for us doing outdoor activities and had spent a lot of time running away from bad weather in the evenings also. So we settled on a roof over our heads for the extended period in Palmy with the plan to get a load of much needed South Island research in as well with this renewed energy and vigour.
When we initially arrived in Himatangi we were a little taken aback by the number of perm resident caravans that appeared in the holiday park. We went full judgy prick mode and the lack of campers put us off quite a lot. So we ended up doing a drive through of the campsite to see what it was like given we were going to spend 6 days here, which is far far far more than is needed in the area. In fact when Nicola called to book the Top10 lady asked why we were staying for so long, and whether we had family in the area. Safe to say we became a pretty permanent fixture in their day for a week. But having done a bit of a drive and walked around it actually seemed alright and then checked in and shown to our room (by the end of our stay we really really liked the place).
The room itself was very small so it lived up to its budget title, but we managed to squeeze absolutely everything from the car into every inch of space in that room.
We were then ready to have a relaxing first night with the wonderful hard roof above our heads. What we didn’t account for was that we would have neighbours. And the first neighbours we had on night 1 were special.
We were greeted by a couple who had their bedroom door open and were just roaming around the place chatting rubbish to each other. The dude said hello to Luke and he politely had a quick chat while we moved all our stuff from the car. In doing so we could hear absolutely everything they were saying to each other and determine and conclude that they were both drunk and/or high. She however was about 5 minutes from being KO’d. It was only 4pm.
We had a bit of respite from the comotion when she started demanding coke from her less innebriated half, to which he started up his increibly loud and shit fuck-boy car and drove off drunk somewhere. Luke was rather innocent in his assessment and thought it was slightly odd that he would risk drunk driving to get some coca-cola. Strange request but we reckon it was actually the drink given the hardcore substance has a ridiculous street value in NZ.
We concluded we weren’t going to be sleeping much that night. But in the interest of safety and that there were tons of kids knocking around the campsite we went full tattle tale to the teacher and grassed on them to the owner. Full snitches get stitches kinda vibe. The owners were kinda aware of them being bad eggs but in reality there was little else they could do without proof and calling the police, and we certainly didn't want our neighbours getting nasty to this poor lady who had a very young child to also look after. She gave us her number and told her to call if there was any more bother later on.
As a de-stressing activity we decided to go for a walk along Himatangi beach, which was very close to our Top10 campsite, and then a short loop around the town before heading back and making dinner.
The campsite had a wicked TV room that was comfortable and Sky TV so while all the kids played in the outdoor areas and games room near the kitchen, we hid away in the TV room by ourselves each and every night we were there. Even served as a great room to take our roll mats and smash out our short daily exercises which was far preferable to doing them in a hot, cramped or unevenly floored tent.
We weren’t quite sure what was waiting for us when we returned back to the room and how the evening had played out for our neighbours but it turns out it had seemed to have gone spectacularly wrong for them.
All was fairly quiet by the time we had put our heads down but this didn’t last long. While we were getting on with our evening, the woman had:
Passed out and thrown up all over the room, so he had been airing it out with assistance from the owners
Once this was all resolved, she got her shit together, taken the guys car keys (assuming after a fight) and driven off in his car leaving him stranded
He then spent the next god knows how many hours on the phone to god knows how many people, shouting and slurring down the phone about how she had stolen his car, he had work the next day and didn’t want to be at the campsite. He also threw in a lot of expletives about fucking people up and prison but we tried not to focus on those in the comfort of our tiny box.
Nicola got incredibly stressed about the car once all this information had been revealed to us as if this woman was going to return at all to the campsite, she was going to be wrecked and being the spot next to us parking wise increased the risk of taking poor old Chopper out. So she braved the outdoors with the drunk lunatic roaming back and forth across the cabin porches to move the car to the other side of the campsite.
This all went on till about 1-2am so naturally we didn’t get much sleep, even with our noise cancelling headphones.
By the time morning came, the drama was over. The woman rocked up with his car again sometime in the morning, so god knows where she was or had slept, and he didn’t even seem all that annoyed. Thankfully they were only there for 1 night and were on their merry way.
That room was fumigated for the entire time we stayed there and they could still not get the vom smell out of it.
We had a laugh about it with the owners in the morning. Fortunately this seemed to very much be a one off for them so we could go on with our ‘relaxing’ stay.
We had booked tickets to go to the Pukaha national wildlife centre and specifically to go looking for Kiwi’s on the night tour. This was due to start at 6pm so our plan was to kill some time during the day before heading over to the wildlife centre earlier than our tour to see the animals in normal operating hours.
The weather was a bit bleak. It was raining but it wasn’t not horrific during the day but we knew this was going to change pretty dramatically come the evening as a storm rolled in over the area with multiple weather warnings out. The night Kiwi experience only runs on a Friday or Saturday so given this was the only day we could do we had little option but to go. That and we had paid.
We killed some time during the day around Eketahuna, and a very short out and back cliff walk where the views were pretty bad and it was over before we knew it. Nicola managed to extend this a bit further down towards the river which made it a lot more worthwhile doing before we went to the wildlife centre.
Once there in the early afternoon the receptionist mentioned she was just about to give Luke a call. With the weather warning and impending rain, she said there was zero chance of us getting any glimpses of the Kiwi (Luke was really unhappy about this) but the feeding of longfin eels and the night tour would still be able to go ahead if we wanted. Given the expected lack of kiwi, the rain and not wanting to do the long drive back to Himatangi along windy back mountain roads in a storm we decided to sack it off and get a refund.
We were however able to carry on with the afternoon wildlife centre tour. We saw kaka, tuatara, longfin eels (also called tuna in Maori), saddleback, gekko & the much coveted kiwi. Highlight was definitely the kiwi roaming around but the eels were absolute monsters.
We also got to witness one of the feeding demonstrations of the kaka which was pretty cool. Sadly had we known all the above about the night tour cancellation we would have arrived earlier and been able to see other such feedings such as the tuna.
There was a decent walk around the back of the reserve Luke was keen to do but ended up running out of time before the wildlife centre closed, so after setting off at a quick pace he quickly turned around with his tail between his legs (turns out he could have easily completed the walk in the time available but wussed out).
We drove back to the campsite and cooked, chilled in our private room and went to finally went to sleep peacefully now rid of any neighbours and also sheltered from the almighty storm that would have made Luke utterly miserable in the tent - lets face it Nicola would have been in the car so absolutely fine.
As we had plenty of time in Palmy we decided to go up to Whanganui town rather than stop off there on our way back up North Island from the South. One of the more interesting things to do here is ride an old steam boat down the Whanganui river but it didn’t seem to be running when researching online and also came with a price tag. But we decided to go anyway.
After a shortish drive, we had a walk around the area starting with the Queens park memorial and then looped round the Whanganui river. It was quite a pleasant walk but nothing groundbreaking.
We got back in the car and drove to the Durie Hill Memorial tower, deciding against walking through the tourist tunnel and getting the lift up as it doesn’t seem this would have added anything. It had quite a lot of stairs in its winding staircase to climb which made Nicola feel pretty lightheaded. Otherwise the view of the town was ok but absolutely nothing special. Going back down the steps this time made both of us dizzy.
To end our short Whanganui trip we drove over to Lake Virginia and had a gentle stroll around the park and through the gardens with the rest of the old biddies getting their daily exercise and doing the same thing.
There was absolutely nothing different about our evenings going forward in Himatangi, bar the different food we cooked and TV/films we watched. We shall call it the ‘Himatangi wind down’ going forward.
We had made zero plans for the day once we woke up, and this was getting later and later here as we didn’t have the noise or light pollution we would usually have slumming it in the tent. Luke had wanted to do the Manawatu gorge walk which was a fairly long out and back route that Nicola wasn’t up for doing, so with the weather being pretty good Nicola suggested today should be the day.
The plan was that we would start the walk together, we would then part ways as Nicola would take the Tawa loop track while Luke carried on along the gorge. At the halfway point Nicola would meet up again briefly and then once Luke was back at the start Nicola would be there waiting to take him home. Simples.
We had realised we didn’t have much leftover lunch and given Luke was about to go on a 27.5km hike Nicola lovingly gave him all the leftover falafel pitas she had and would buy lunch. What a gem.
We both walked together for the best part of 15 minutes before we parted ways, hugged it out for hours before both walking off in tears. Lol jk Nicola said ‘don’t get hurt dickhead’ and Luke was on his merry lonesome way.
Given the rain of late it was pretty muddy for Nicola as she walked around the Tawa loop so it wasn’t such a great walk for her. But it was pretty short so the pain was short lived.
For Luke, it was a pretty enjoyable walk. It was basically sunny for the entire day and the route had various viewpoints to stop and see the gorge so had some great views (although not many of them). The downhill from the highest point to the halfway mark was the worst bit and Luke had to don his waterproof trousers to protect from the long grass that his legs react pretty badly to - downside this makes his balls sweat furiously.
We had our wonderful unification at the halfway point. It couldn't have been more romantic as we rushed through our lunch on a falling apart bench in overgrown ‘Luke destroying’ grass while being chased by mozzies. It was over in quite a hurry but we had a short walk at that end of the track together before parting ways.
The purpose of the walk was really to get Luke a day’s worth of decent exercise and also see how far he could go before getting tired or his knee causing him problems. All in all he walked 27.5km, elevation gain of 1,247m and moving time of 4hrs 48mins. He found it pretty easy, got his exercise, enjoyed his first walk by himself and had no knee problems. Win win.
Nicola's day- After finishing off the Tawa loop and getting used to solo hiking I headed off to town and got a sensational panini before heading to a local cafe which was open until 4:30 with the aim of doing some research. Said cafe was actually wonderful, with an acre of gardens to explore full of fairies and elves! So I had a lovely time with my hot chocolate in a little New Zealand Narnia.
Nicola picked Luke up from the start of the car park, informed him of her very different and relaxing day while driving us both back to camp.
As Nicola still had some pent up energy and it was deemed to be a good idea for Luke to keep his legs moving in an extended cool down sort of manner we went for a sunset stroll on Himatangi beach which was very nice.
What wasn’t so nice was an old man trying to relive his youth and tearing it down the beach in his wanky car revving and attempting to drift on the sand. It didn’t sound good, it didn’t look good and him yelling odd shit out of the window while doing it made it all so weird. Fearing that he’d lose control and actually hit us, we ended our sunset chill early and started making our way to the back exit up the sand dunes. When we had realised he’d fucked off we scrapped that and went back through the front exit but pretty miffed he’d ruined our vibe.
Himatangi wind down.
At this point we were pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas around Palmy.
Given the morning was pretty clear we went for a very short walk called the Upper Turitea Green Corridor, highlighted by being stared down by some alpacas on a nearby farm.
We then found a library with a free to use computer and spent the afternoon there until it closed. Nicola tweaked some stuff on the blog and we both had hours of concentrated NZ South Island research so while not very exciting it was a very productive day. Also helped that it absolutely bucketed it down while we were in the library so it wasn’t like we could have really seized much of the outdoors.
Himatangi wind down.
As the last full day in the area we decided to spend it actually in Palmerston North. The main plan Luke had was to rent bikes and cycle some of the Manawatu river pathway but on parking up in town we couldn’t find any hire bikes for love nor money.
That plan was quickly scrapped and decided to walk around part of the river but mainly the number of parks around the Victoria Esplanade. The rose garden was lovely so we had some lunch there and also walked into a small free wildlife centre around the area. As far as free things went it was a pretty decent morning and early afternoon. The playpark was actually insane - New Zealand really has their shit figured out when it comes to keeping kids entertained and outdoors. The UK set up just doesn’t compare.
The last thing we did in Palmy was the New Zealand rugby museum. It had a very overzealous worker wanting to talk about rugby with everyone that walked in, which given the both of us do not follow much at all (Luke loved playing but stopped that at 17 when everyone muscled up and he didn’t) was a pretty embarrassing entrance for us. The museum itself was not massive and was incredibly heavy on the reading. Nicola couldn’t maintain much of an interest in it so whizzed through a fair amount quicker than Luke.
The most interesting part was the games in the middle of the room. It had a kicking challenge, tackle pads to see how quickly one could reset and a scrum machine to determine a person's power. So we dicked around for 15 minutes and then left.
Chopper had been needing a clean pretty desperately so we found a self service one and puzzled our way through the various settings and cleaning stages we knew nothing about, all while on a charging timer. A meat head saw Nicola getting her brush on and decided to comment on Luke’s lack of input - so hilariously witty Luke just fake laughed and walked away. We miss the simplicity of a drive in car wash and get a team of people to do all the work.
Himatangi wind down.
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