A Final Look at Mount Taranaki

The morning of our return to Wellington, I once again got up early and was treated to a nice dawn showing by the mountain.

Checking out Opunake

For the third day in Opunake, we took a bit of tour of the town. Early in the morning, I headed down to the beach again to soak my feet. I have been rather clumsy of late with my feet. I keep banging into things and scraping them. Then in Fiji I did the snorkelling with the fins, but no booties, and I rubbed my toes raw. Coupled with breaking my shoe the a couple of days later and wandering around in the mud, I had developed a bit of infection in a couple of my toes. So I was soaking them for a few minutes a couple of times a day at the beach in Opunake in order to try and clear the infection. It was also just nice to spend a few minutes in the surf on the beach each day.

After breakfast, we headed out to the point what felt like northwest-ish of town. The view along the shore and cliffs was amazing.

Also visible from that point was one of the off-shore drilling rigs for a local oil company. It was either 14 or 40 kilometers off the coast, depending on who is telling you. I am voting 14, since I think 40 puts it beyond the curve of the earth, but I don't remember the math. In any case, with my pretty impressive camera lens, I was able to take a photo of it.

After looking at the coastal cliffs for a while, Mat went down for a look to see if he could find some paua, or abalone. Due to attempts to help the population of abalone recover, there are restrictions of 10 per person per day for anyone catching them. Of course, that's only if you can find them, and Mat had no luck this day.

Next we headed to the cemetery, through which the Opunake portion of the New Zealand Coastal Walkway goes. We were heading out in an effort to see an old Maori fortress hill. We found this tombstone in the cemetery with an interesting name.

And then it was all for naught. The trail led past a bunch of cows, a number of electrified fences (and yes, I can absolutely say for sure that they were indeed electrified, having tested the matter for myself; not a recommended course of action), down a hill to a river with an iron bridge. That was broken. And with their baby along, we just didn't feel much like fording the river and getting wet. So, I contented myself with a photo of the hill fortress from our side of the river.

Later, Mat and I took a walk around the local lake. While we were walking, we noticed a hole that someone had dug. There were sticks and stones sticking out of the hole. We found out later (the next day) that someone had dug the hole, put sharp rocks and sticks at the bottom, covered it over and left it to be found by a passerby, the hard way. And a woman in her fifties did just that, luckily only twisting her leg as she fell in the hole (luckily because with the sharp sticks, she might have been impaled and far more seriously injured). We continued on. The farmland around Opunake is very green. Then we arrived at the cliffs on the coast again. Mat took me down to the base of the cliffs which, in times past before people really thought better, were used as the dump. People would pile their garbage into trailers, take the trailers to the cliff edge, and dump the garbage over into the sea. Now, we find that horrifying, but that is how it was done before.

But now the result is that at the base of the cliffs, there are piles of old garbage. One kind of garbage in particular is masses of iron and other metal. It has been there so long that it is now just one big mass of metal, fused or melted together. It is an interesting sight.

And Mount Taranaki put in an appearance as well, poking its head through the clouds.

The Assault on Mt. Taranaki

Okay, so I'm trying to add a bit of drama to the excursion. Part of what Mat wanted to do with me this weekend was to have a bit of a climb on Mt. Taranaki. So early-ish on Sunday morning, we headed out towards the mountain. Initially it seemed to have been a bad idea. From Opunake, the sky towards the mountain was very cloudy and it was raining a bit as we left. Quickly, though, the rain stopped and the skies started to clear. I was shown various points of interest along the way. I wish I knew as much about my area of the world as Mat knows about his. It's astonishing the stuff he knows about the area.

Eventually we approached the mountain and got a pretty good view of Mt. Taranaki.

Then we entered Egmont National Park. Mount Taranaki is the current name of the mountain, and the Maori name. Mount Egmont is the previous name is the one that Europeans gave to the mountain when they came and settled New Zealand. And the national park was given the European name. When we entered the park, we passed from farmland, few trees with lots of grazing areas, into a dense forest. And the line is very abrupt. From the plane, when I had seen Mt. Taranaki, I had thought that the area around the mountain was possibly rocky with lots of volcanic rocks. I don't know why I had assumed that would be the case for the area immediately around the mountain in a fairly perfect circle, but nowhere else in the little peninsula. In any case, I was mistaken, and it is actually dense forest that surrounds the mountain and the edge of the forest marks the boundary of the national park.

We also began to climb. I don't know what altitude we reached before we arrived at the Dawson Falls visitor center, but my ears popped at least twice. The visitor center is quite nice and has a number of dioramas with information about the flora and fauna of the area. There is also a model of the mountain and its immediate surroundings. We told the man in the center where we were headed and then started up towards a couple of shelters on the trail to the summit. At the beginning of the hike, we were passing through the dense forest. It was kind of eerie under the canopy, with moss growing on the trunks of the trees and most of the light cut off by the tree roof over our heads.

Then gradually, the canopy thinned out and became sparse overhead. Rather abruptly, the canopy disappeared and the trees became much shorter, more like bushes. We were somewhat suddenly able to see the surrounding countryside and also able to see how high we had reached.

And we were also able to see how far there was to go. But the day had become somewhat less bright and sunny. In fact, there were no periods of drizzly rain. When we reached the first shelter, we rested for a few minutes to wait out a stronger period of rain.

Abruptly, the bushes thinned to become mostly scrub grasses and some mosses with a few hardy bushes that were very low to the ground. And finally, as we reached the limit of the trail for which we were prepared, the grasses thinned to become just scree slopes with the little vegetation that was able to withstand the conditions on the upper reaches of the volcano's slopes.

But one of the nicer things about the periods of rain and then sunshine was the appearance of a really pretty rainbow.

At the top of our trek, at the limit of the grasses and scrub bushes, where the scree started, the clouds parted for a few minutes to give a final nice view of the surrounding areas of pasture and farmland.

We had gotten quite high on the mountain, but a look back up towards the summit of the lower peak still showed we had a ways to go. Unfortunately we did not have the footwear, handwear, or other equipment it would be necessary to scramble up scree to the top, and withstand what had become a rather bitter cold wind. We had reached the point that Mat had wanted to reach, though, so we descended quite happy with the accomplishment, settled at the second hut on the trail, and had lunch before descending back down to the lodge.

Along the way, we passed a recently built stone chair commemorating the life and death of one of New Zealand's more famous people, Sir Edmund Hillary and his ascent of Mount Everest.

At the bottom we headed towards Dawson Falls, but first checked out the oldest continuously operating generator/power plant in New Zealand. Mat was particularly interested in that as he is currently working on becoming a licensed electrician.

The final stop in the area was at Dawson Falls. We didn't climb all the way down, as that would have necessitated climbing all the way up again, and we had had enough of that with the mountain. I took Mat's word for it that the better view was this one, only part way down to the base of the falls. After that, we headed back to Opunake, where they hadn't seen the mountain at all that day, for a nice warm shower.

Checking out New Plymouth

The biggest city in the Taranaki region is New Plymouth. Sarah and Mat took me to New Plymouth to check it out. At the beginning of the day, I went to the Opunake beach to check it out. (Opunake is Mat's hometown.) The waves have been particularly big lately, so I'm told. The area kind of reminds me of the Oregon Coast.

Then it was into the car for the 40 minute drive to New Plymouth. We started with a visit to Mat's grandmother. She was very nice and she also makes a mean little pancake. Very delicious. Then we went to check out Pukekura Park.

This is a large park in the city that hosts a cricket field. This cricket field was also one of the location shoots for the Tom Cruise movie, The Last Samurai. And aside from some minor changes, like the removal of the light posts and, when the camera was facing the other direction, the CGI removal of the city scape beyond the entrance gate, the cricket field was shown almost exactly as it really appears. I guess I now have to watch that movie again.

Pukekura Park has a fairly large lake in the middle of it, with trees sprawling across it...

...and a bridge or two. This one is called the Poet's Bridge. Unfortunately, despite its rather cerebral name, it is actually named after a race horse called The Poet. But I pretended that poets went to the bridge and composed sonnets and couplets and haikus and other such verse.

Then we walked further along to the amphitheater. Among others, Cliff Richard and Elton John have performed on this stage, presumably to much smaller audiences than they normally would. It really looked like a great place to go and watch some concert or other performance.

There was also a zoo in the park. A free zoo. It wasn't very big, but it had a farm animal area, and a free flying bird cage. Inside there were lots of birds, including this parrot.

My favourites were the monkeys. They were cool.

Then we went to watch part of a rugby match at the local stadium, but unfortunately Mat's team didn't start off too well, so we left before too long. As we were leaving there was a rather awesome try scored. (A try is the main point getting play in the game of rugby.) And even for someone who knows next to nothing about rugby, I thought it was an awesome play. A well executed play, in any sport, seems to convey some sort of elegant signal of its awesomeness. After the rugby, we visited another friend of Mat's for a while. And we finished off with a visit to the coastal walk of New Plymouth. New Plymouth has been working on a walking path along the waterfront that allows people the chance to experience the natural beauty of the area. As part of that effort, they built a rather nice bridge to cross a river in the area. However, it was a bit weird. There is this quite attractive bridge over a river linking two rather barren areas of pathway. I imagine there are plans for the area to make it all attractive and eventually the bridge will fit in.

Meanwhile there is an breathtaking view of Mt. Taranaki towering over the area. When clouds aren't obscuring the view, that is.

 And I took a photo of Mat, Sarah and Jacob on the bridge.

The Road to Taranaki

I met Sarah and Mat in South Korea. Mat is from Taranaki and it's from him that I first heard about Taranaki, God's Country, the most beautiful place on Earth, the best ever to be from, the, well, you get the idea. Naturally, I wanted to see if they had somehow brought Alberta to New Zealand.

So Mat took all of Friday off, after a rough day at work on Thursday, and Sarah took a half day, and we piled everyone in the car (including Jacob, their son, who takes himself to bed at the suggestion that it's bedtime, and cleans up his own toys when he's told to. Where did they find him? If I ever have kids, I'll have two of him please.), and headed out of town through the hills of Upper Hutt to the highway. The way through the hills leads to this view. Nice!

We arrived in Bulls somewhere along the way. Bulls is named after a man named James Bulls. He established a business in the area and became so popular that the place was given his name. Now, the town has taken the name and made some truly awful, but very clever, puns out of it. They're great.

And then it was on into the Taranaki region. We arrived at Mat's parents' house, and they, like Sarah's parents, made me feel very welcome. No wonder Sarah and Mat are such wonderful people. They came from wonderful families. We had some dinner and chatted and got to bed early for the big day to New Plymouth the next day.

And the Taranaki region? Well, it is pretty impressive, for not being Alberta. :)