Taranaki - The Mountain & The Mullet

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July 9th 2006

Published: July 16th 2006

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Angus Jo Ailsa

Mount Taranaki

Our first decent view

Good old, Queen - whatever you think of her and her family, she does get us a day off every year. We took advantage of this year's Queen's Birthday public holiday to go away to Taranaki for the weekend.

The 'naki is the peninsula sticking out of the west coast of the Central North Island and is about 6 hours drive from Wellington. We didn't fancy doing the whole drive in one evening so we stopped overnight at Wanganui which is about two thirds of the way there and headed onto our final destination New Plymouth the next morning.

The next day was pretty clear and meant we got some good views of the sight that dominates the whole region - Mount Egmont or Mount Taranaki depending on your politics. I prefer to use the original Maori name so I'll refer to as the latter. I took a huge number of photos of it from many angles, but I'll try to keep it down to about 4 or 5 on this blog! It's said to look a lot like Japan's Mount Fuji and it was actually used as a mountain double for Fuji in the re-make of the Last

Mountain to Mountain

Looking from Dawson Falls on Mt Taranaki over the central North Island to Mt Ruapehu on the right and Mt Ngauruhoe on the left.

Samurai, which was filmed here a few years ago. Apparently Tom Cruise really enjoyed the 'naki so we though if it was good for him, then we'd better give it a crack as well.

We spent sometime on the Saturday gorping at the mountain and walking through the excellent Pukekura Park. It was in this park that I saw my first 'naki mullet which is sadly a popular haircut in this mainly agricultural province. They start them young too - this kid must have been about 7 and fittingly his mother had a black eye - welcome to the 'naki!

The weather deteriorated badly overnight and Sunday was a pretty wet and cold one. We started with a great brunch and then a trip round the Puke Ariki Museum which I assumed was in honour of the god of the smelly chunder but in fact isn't. So there.... It was a bit of a mini Te Papa (Wellington’s famous museum) and it was a pretty good way to waste a couple of hours.

Then we headed off in the car to drive the Surf Highway round the coast, so-called because of the abundance of surf beaches just

Close up on Mt Ruapehu

Ruapehu in the volcano that we went skiing on last September - its still active and last blew its top about 10 years ago...and they kept skiing!

off the road. We stopped at a few of these 'surf beaches' and funnily enough didn't see any surfers and any surf for that matter. Not much sand, either - just loads of rocks. Our conclusion - only a complete nutter with a death wish would surf on these beaches and apparently there's loads of them in the 'naki. They just weren’t mad enough to come out in that weather.

The rain came and went and the sun even put its hat on for about 10 minutes but it stayed cold and a bit miserable for the whole day. The weather got even worse overnight with very heavy rain and howling gales. However, the Monday was a wee beauty! The sun shone all day but it was still chilly. We drove to the Pukeiti Gardens which is famous for it’s colourful rhododendrons although they're weren't looking at their best what with it being winter and all! We had a lovely walk in the gardens and we had the whole place to ourselves and my had the chance to try out my new camera's close-up setting to snap some flowers.

On the way out of town to drive back

Jo-Ann at the rather disappointing Dawson Falls

to Wellington, we stopped at Lake Mangamohoe, which is just on the outskirts of new Plymouth where we got some fantastic views of Mount Taranaki over the lake. A few snaps later, we were on our way and a lovely sunny drive back to Wellington.

A really good weekend despite some dodgy weather at times - I can definitely recommend a wee trip to Taranaki. It’s not too shabby at all!

The next blog will be more of a general update of what we've been up to in Wellington and some more photos of this great city on the few lovely days we've had recently (we’ve had been mostly dreadful weather this month while you’ve all been basking in it back in the UK, you'll be amused to know - ya lucky sods!)

Cheers!

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