Alanz Eyes

Day Two

March 14th, 2004 - Posted by Alan Howard

Ok, we woke up around 7:45am, had breakfast in the kitchen of the backpackers, and then drove around New Plymouth for a while, looking at the beaches and stuff. We walked along a wharf at the ‘Taranaki Marina’ and then went out to Mt Egmont (also known as Mt Taranaki). It was supposed to be the highlight of the area, because it’s a Mt Fuji lookalike (big Japanese Mountain near Tokyo), but yesterday and today had too much cloud cover, so we weren’t able to see anything from probably about 200 metres up. We got to a reasonable level to sit and have a bite to eat and look out over New Plymouth, and take some photos. Along the way back to New Plymouth we stopped at a small reserve of some kind and sat by a nice little river.

After having lunch in New Plymouth we set off to our next stop of Waitomo Caves. We arrived around 5:30 and after putting our stuff in the room, just relaxed. This place is even better than where we were yesterday. I’d say this is about an 8/10, and yesterday’s drops to 6/10 because I’ve got something else to compare it to.

Unfortunately, my plan of going through the caves tonight didn’t work out, as they only have day-tours. So we’re booked in for a tour tomorrow at 10:15am, which means we’re not going to get away from here before 2pm. We’ll hopefully get to our next destination of Whangarei before 7pm. However, I’m not exactly sure about that, because we’ll be going through Auckland during peak hour, which could be a nightmare. Ah well… it is an adventure after all…

It’s 7:20pm now - time to make dinner.

Entry Filed under: Pre-2006