New Plymouth & Mount Taranaki

We've been wanting to see Mount Taranaki during our time here, but it is 4 and 1/2 hours from Auckland, so it is tricky to get there and back in a weekend.  Rob's colleague at work (Dave) was kind enough to swap a Friday evening for a Thursday evening so we could have a 3 day weekend to make the trek.  We took another beautiful drive south of Auckland and headed along the west coast.  The last 1 and 1/2 hours were beautiful, but as expected in New Zealand, windy roads!

It's now fall here, so the weather is getting colder.  We arrived on Friday to some rain, but managed to find a nice pizza restaurant near the hotel, so we didn't get too wet.  We enjoyed checking out the boardwalk along the beach and seeing the very cool wind wand.  Saturday was also quite rainy in the morning, so we checked out the local museum.  It cleared up in the afternoon and went for a long walk on the coastal walkway.  Once we got back to town we had some fun with the local murals.

Rob was pretty keen to do some surfing as New Plymouth is the first stop on 'Surf Highway'.  The local surf shop said the waves would be best Saturday evening and early Sunday morning.  We braved the cool weather and water and went for short session at Oakura Beach before supper on Saturday.

Next morning we woke up and headed down to Fitzroy beach right in New Plymouth.  Rob was the only surfer in the family this day while Erin and the kids 'enjoyed' a dysfunctional car key/taxi ride adventure.  Then Rob made it extra fun by losing his wedding ring.  We searched and searched, left contact info with local stores nearby and assumed it was gone.  When we got home we realized it had fallen into Erin's purse!  Thankfully there is no dog house at the apartment, so Rob got to sleep in his regular bed.

Sunday was beautiful, so we finally got to see Mount Taranaki.  It has been used as Mount Fuji's 'stunt double' in many movies.  We did not get a chance to do any hiking or skiing here, but it looks pretty spectacular.

Not too many places in the world where you can surf and look back towards the beach to see a snowy covered mountain!

Then it was a long drive home...longer than usual due to good old Auckland traffic.  We won't miss Auckland traffic!