30 Sept: Begin Urban Experience

The Kapiti island tour was cancelled for bad weather, as we'd been warned could happen. We've re-booked it for Sunday. But that left us at 8am with nothing to do but to run on down into Wellington to begin our planned five days of urbane urbanity.

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Our hotel is very basic, barely above a hostel accomodation for amenities, but it is dead center in the entertainment district and easy walking from most everything else. Plus, they have an offstreet parking lot that (just barely) holds our 6.6-meter van.

The weather this morning was yucky. Temp about 11ºC (55ºF or so?) with steady rain and gusty breezes. Even the locals, who we've seen walking around in shorts and tank-tops in almost any condition, were bundled up in hoodies and looking bedraggled. Thus you'll pardon us, not a lot of pictures.

We walked from the hotel to the visitor center and then on to the Government buildings where we got a guided tour of the Parliament building which was quite interesting (in addition to being warm and dry).

This of course is the national seat of government. New Zealand went to a unicameral form of government in the 1950s, so there is just a parliament, no upper house. The actual meeting chamber is not unlike lots of the state house chambers we've seen (being collectors of state houses as we are). We can't show it because this was only the second place we've been that didn't allow cameras. (The other was a very uninteresting city museum in Wanganui. Oddly enough the city art gallery next door allowed them.)

We were shown one of the meeting rooms used by Select Committees. There are 13 of these, for Health, Foreign Relations, and so on, like the committees of the US House and Senate; most of the nuts and bolts of legislation gets done in the committees. The unusual point to us was, anybody who wants to address a committee can sign up to do so. If you want to put your oar in on Foreign Relations, you can. Oh, and while you are addressing a committee in session, you are exempt from libel and slander laws.

The big parliament building in the picture was built around WWI, but in the 1990s they did a seismic retrofit, as it sits less than a kilometer from a major fault line. The installed 150 big rubber shock absorbers under it, then sliced through the foundation horizontally with saws, leaving a 20mm gap, so the building floats on the rubber disks.

It's the big city so we decided to have some night life, yippee. The only live music we could find was in a supper club that is just a block from our front door. Supper and live jazz for an hour, then back to the modest room.

29 Sept: Transit Day

Pretty much all we are doing today is transiting from Wanganui down to a park next to the terminal for the ferry to Kapiti Island reserve. Weather permitting we will spend tomorrow on the island, another nature preserve comparable to Tiritiri Matangi where we were our second day.

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(P.S. are these maps working for you? In Safari they work for us, but in Firefox sometimes the route doesn't show. We've no way to test in Internet Explorer.)

Before we left Wanganui we discovered almost by accident a lookout tower viewing area.

Wanganui has a history as a river boat port. Back when, this was a major trade artery into the interior of the North Island.

Further down the road we stopped at an estuary for a little birding. Here we scored the Royal Spoonbill, and on the way out, the White-Faced Crane.

Laundry ... showers ... end of a perfect day...

28 Sept: Spring Forward Day

Today is the day that New Zealand sets the clocks an hour ahead. So it's officially spring! Other than bitching about rain, we haven't talked about the weather. Well, here was today's weather when we set out to transit from New Plymouth to Wanganui.

Not long after, it rained buckets for a couple of hours. By evening, though, it was partly cloudy and sunny.

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The typical daytime high has been around 65ºF, often with a stiff breeze. Nights it gets down into the 40s. Far from tropical! A week from today we will cross to the South Island and get further still from the equator.

The touristical event of the day was a stop at the Tawhiti ("taffity") Museum. This is a fairly amazing labor of love by one guy to document New Zealand, and especially Taranaki District, history. In part he's done it by collecting; he has dozens of tractors and old cultivators and cream separators:

But also with dozens of full-scale dioramas, which (as with the Kauri Museum a few days ago) he populates with figures modelled after real local people. Marian likes this one:

and David likes this one, of Maori warriors planning a defense:

This last was part of a big exhibit about the "Musket Wars" of 1820-1840. During that period, before there was any significant European settlement, the Maori started to acquire muskets from traders. And they used them to fight wars between tribes—wars that in earlier days, fought with hand weapons, were not so serious. There was a stunning miniature diorama of a Maori army on the move to invade Taranaki region (as apparently happened several times).

It contained literally hundreds of figures, all different, as here:

Anyway, we moved on to the large town of Wanganui, which has the rather touching slogan of "Welcome Home." It's a busy regional town of about the same size as New Plymouth (about 40,000 population) but has a more compact and walkable central district and lots of flowers.

We visited the city museum and city art gallery here as well, before buying some groceries and settling into a Holiday Park on the shores of the Whanganui River, which is New Zealand's longest navigable river—it reaches all the way up to Taumarunui, where we were several days ago.

There is a local controversy about these names. The town has been called Wanganui ("wong-uh-newy") since its founding in 1840. But it appears the founders got it wrong, because the Maori name should be written Whanganui ("fong-uh-newy"). (By the way, we have not been able to find out why the Europeans chose to phoneticize the "eff" sound using "wh" instead of, oh, maybe—an "F"?)

So the river and the district are WHanganui, but the town is Wanganui, and the mayor and city officials refuse to change it, although they are under some pressure to do so. It's a big eff-ing argument in these parts.

27 Sept: More Taranaki District

First there is a mountain
Then there is no mountain
Then there is.

Donovan Lietch, 1966

Yesterday we got great looks at Mt. Taranaki. This morning it wasn't to be seen. We started the day at Marian's suggestion with a stroll along part of New Plymouth's Seafront Walkway, a 6km beach hike/bike trail. Hardly anybody was out but us and some surfers.

Then we drove to the SE corner of Taranaki district to walk around the shores of Lake Rotokare. This is yet another nature preserve that has been fenced to keep out imported predators so New Zealand wildlife can thrive.

Building a predator-proof fence is no small matter.

So off we went on this 4km hike. It was mostly level (only one of those staircases that we are coming to think of as the signature of New Zealand hiking trails).

It was mostly in deep woods and a bit muddy in spots from the recent rains. We could hear lots of birds but most of them stayed out of sight.

One that didn't hide, and this kind of made the day, was the New Zealand Giant Pigeon. We've been wanting a good look at him and there he was. Just like a normal pigeon, but the size of a big chicken. Scary!

And, he wears a singlet!

As we headed back through the cattle ranch country, Taranaki popped out.

Shasta will always be our first love, but Taranaki is just one damn fine mountain.

The sculptured hills created by cow and sheep grazing.

Damn fine mountain.

On Clicking Through...

Hey, we just got to wondering... most of you are computer-savvy and probably know this, but maybe somebody doesn't... Almost all the pictures we post are backed up by larger, higher-resolution versions.

If you click on a picture, it will open in a new window in a cinerama version with lots more detail.

Just in case you didn't know... because we are about to post some really pretty pictures that deserve to be seen full-screen.

26 Sept: Taranaki!

So... did the weather clear? Did we see a mountain?

Oh gosh yes!

On arising, at 6:30, David walked out to the street outside the RV park and looked south.

Woo-hoo!

We slurped our coffee quick and headed out.

The clouds changed every few minutes.

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The circular boundary seen on the map and in the aerial photo in yesterday's post was probably in fact drawn by a compass, on a map, when the national park was established. Within the circle is a dense forest of native New Zealand plants. Outside is light-green cattle grazing land.

On the left, private land; on the right, national park.

The narrow road up to the visitor center through native jungle.

We went for a walk.

It turned out to be another challenging walk with stairs.

Twenty minutes into the walk it became clear that it was all stairs, first down, then up, then down some more... so we bailed with 40 minutes of exercise. New Zealand walks are for vigorous walkers.

Coming down-slope, we visited a Rhododendron Garden, which we will show pics of on some slow day later. Then we continued to drive the circle of roads around the mountain.

From the northwest it was wearing a wind-blown veil.

Later from the east it had on a tutu.

A final look from the north.

25 Sept: Forgotten World Highway

Today we drove to the metropolis of Taranaki district, the town of New Plymouth, and booked in for a 3-night stay at a "Holiday Camp" (RV Park).

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From here, weather permitting, we will get some looks at Mount Taranaki. Just to tantalize us we looked it up in Wikipedia.

We did NOT see this today.

We have seen Taranaki, from the air in 2005 as our tour group flew from Auckland to Christchurch.

The skirt of the mountain is a perfect circle as neat as if you'd marked it with a compass.

We've been looking forward to a close look at Taranaki since we started planning this trip. The weather forecast is mmmm...sorta hopeful. We'll see. We have contingency plans for "if we can see the mountain" and "if we can't."

Well, but, today we drove the "Forgotten World Highway," a narrow and lightly-travelled road through alternating farmland and wilderness. And by lightly-travelled we mean, over 95 miles we saw perhaps 20 cars oncoming, and none, zero, cars came up behind.

The weather alternated between pouring rain and watery gleams of sunshine. Here are a few pics along the way. Forgive blurs due to shooting through a rainy windscreen.

Starting out alongside a rain-swollen river.

A ray of sunshine! Snap a picture!

No photoshop: it really is this color.

Native vegetation: once it was all like this. Then came sheep farming.

New Plymouth has about 50,000 population and a bustling downtown. On its waterfront is this sculpture, the Wind Wand, a 45-meter tall carbon-fiber shaft that flexes in the wind.

Will we see the mountain tomorrow?

24 Sept: Drippier Day

Early in the morning, the sky over Lake Taupo was still cloudy, but the clouds had substance and clearing weather was forecast. So we cheerfully headed south, towards Tongariro National Park.

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Tongariro is reputed to have some of the North Island's most striking scenery. It's home to three great volcanoes. Ruapehu, the tallest at 8671 feet, last erupted in 2007. We had planned to spend a couple of days there, enjoying the, "beautiful mixture of semi-arid plains, steaming fumaroles, crystal-clear lakes and streams, virgin rainforest, and an abundance of ice and snow," says The Rough Guide to New Zealand.

Alas, the weather didn't clear. As we neared our destination, this was the view of the southern end of Lake Taupo:

and we couldn't see anything of the mountains looming behind us. The weather showed no signs of clearing, so we revised our plans and headed west towards our next destination, Mt. Taranaki.

Ten days on the road in the Tuatara Traveller has reinforced Marian's decision that she isn't going to drive this right-hand-drive, five-on-the-floor, prone-to-stalling vehicle. So David drives while Marian navigates, enjoys the scenery, and takes "road pictures" through the windscreen, a few of which are worth keeping.

When the scenery is especially nice, we stop and get out and take better photos

and sometimes find a surprise by the side of the road.

Mt. Taranaki is several hours drive away and it was raining harder than ever, so we called it a day in Taumarunui, the only town (albeit a very small one) en route. We checked in to a nice RV park near town and spent the afternoon taking our pleasures as we found them.

Cruising Taumarunui's main street

Surfing the internet

Considered going to a movie this evening, but the Taumarunui Cinema is only open on weekends. Having New Zealand kumara (sweet potatoes), asparagus and raspberries for dinner — yum. Hoping for better weather tomorrow.