I have not had a huge amount to write about so your going to get a couple of days lumped onto one. I travelled on the ferry to the North Island leaving the Snail on the rail deck, something I never considered before train carriages on a ferry but clearly it happens! The views where once again just beautiful but I was on a mission. I wanted breakfast! Lasagna (well more an early lunch) I had rembered the food was good on the way over and I wasn’t disappointed.
The journey from Wellington to Egremont National Park and New Plymouth took longer than I expected, nearly 6 hours! I was pretty bored of driving by now and the landscape as you approach the National Park is low lying and arable. There were a couple of unusual things though. At about 5pm I needed a loo and as public toilets here are plentiful and usually fairly clean I took the next sign posted one. It turned out to be in Bason Botanic Garden! It was completely empty. I drove in and followed the road down and down, passed manicured lawns, glassy ponds and architectural plants. It was all very eerie and reminded me The 1965 version of The Time Machine, the gardens where the Eloi live before the Morlocks harvest them.
Well having visited the loo, and with no Morlocks in sight, I carried on. I then saw a flash of blue on a phone wire beside the road as I left the garden. A sacred Kingfisher, absolutely beautiful.
As I headed towards New Plymouth I was hoping to see Mount Taranaki the volcano that dominates the area but, it was covered in cloud!
The next day, it was raining torrentially and blowing a gale. It was humid though. Toni my landlady suggested Puke Ariki museum in town. The museum is free and has a natural history display including stuff about Mount Taranaki, a settlers section but by far the most interesting was the Maori section.
Still the rain didnt let up so I decided not to be deterred and put on my rain coat and went for a walk in the Pukekura Park. It is very beautiful public park with some chinese features but what I really wanted to see was the 2000 year old Puriri tree. This tree is sacred to the Maori and is evergreen with beautiful flowers. I couldn’t see much of the actual tree due to the epiphytes covering it but the trunk was impressive.
I went dancing in the evening, it was not a very well attended club but the teacher was excellent, so much so, she taught me some moves I’d never seen before and tidied up my footwork. There were two really good male leads, I was just happy to dance so I took several beginners for a spin too!
The Travelling Bee 