The drive along the coast was purported to be extremely picturesque. It wasn't as expected but it was nice. I think part of the problem was that we were traveling at high tide and a lot of the places to see were contingent on it being low tide. However we did see some nice sights and enjoy our drive into New Plymouth.
It was just prior to reaching New Plymouth that we got our first look at Mount Taranaki from the west side. It had a bit of cloud coverage but we could still make it out.
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| Mount Taranaki |
When we reached New Plymouth we headed for the downtown area. We walked around both the downtown and the water front. They have a very nice walkway along the shoreline that borders the downtown. We took a few pictures and then decided to have a late lunch.
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| Lumberjack Contest on waterfront |
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| Wind wand |
We had just completed our lunch when it started to rain. We decided that our best course of action would be to find a grocery store and stay in New Plymouth for the night. We completed our grocery shopping, found a campsite and just relaxed for the rest of the day. We did notice that it was starting to get quite a bit colder as the day progressed. I think summer may be over.
Day 158, March 7 has us walking up to a clear, brisk day. As we got ready to leave we noticed that Mount Taranaki had its first new layer of snow. It takes on a whole different character when it has its white covering. We spent a little time driving around town driving to find the perfect spot to take a picture before the clouds covered it again.
The cloud cover was coming in fast and by the time we had gotten out of town it was already starting to cloud over. We had been hoping that we would be able to see it from all sides as we curved around the coast.
The highway from New Plymouth around to Wanganui is called " The Surf Highway" The name comes from generations of surfers searching for the perfect wave. The Taranaki coastline is home to countless classic surf breaks. Breaks like Stent Road, the Kumara Patch, Fitzroy Beach and Arawhata Road have become legendary in New Zealand.
Prior to hitting the beaches we did find some pretty rugged but picturesque coastline. Again our touring and picture taking was restricted due to high tide. However we did find a few places to click the shutter.
One of the famous surf beaches we did stop at was Stent Road Beach. It is a very popular surfing beach and they had to finally mark the road on a rock as people kept taking the road signs as souvenirs. There was nobody there as it was a Monday and the summer season is over. The surf was pretty rough and it is easy to see why it would be popular.
While we were still on Hwy 45, the Surf Highway, we got a to see a little more of Mount Taranaki. Some of the cloud cover lifted for a short time and we could not stop ourselves from taking a few more pictures.
We detoured off the highway to take look at and take a picture of a lighthouse that was built in 1865. While we were on route we noticed a bunch of cone shaped hills that weren't very high but were very distinctive.
We discovered that these were created by ancient lahars. When Mount Taranaki erupted the seepage or lahars flowed over the already existing boulders and created the very distinctive hills.
It wasn't very long that reached Hawera and the end of the Surf Highway. We were in a town called Hawera where we decided to have a very late lunch. The rest of the drive was over highway already travelled as we were headed to Wanganui. Tomorrow we would be back on new highway heading towards Tongariro National Park.
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