Mount Taranaki Roadtrip

Last weekend my parents decided to take us up the coast of the North Island to see what we could see.  In the year we have lived here, I haven’t been more than about an hour outside of Wellington.  There’s a lot to do in a 1 hour radius so we have not been slacking.  We just had not yet struck out for the wild lands.  After a bit of debate we decided to try for Wanganui and, ultimately, Mount Taranaki.

Distances are deceptive in New Zealand.  A short 100 km drive may take you a couple of hours or more.  This is mostly because the two-lane highway system is often very twisty-turny.  But unlike the States, traffic doesn’t seem to be a factor.  I rarely had to pass anyone and when I did need to there was always a passing lane just a few klicks up the road.  From my experience so far, you won’t be needing your cruise control in New Zealand.  The speed limits range from about 30 kph to 100 kph.  For an English measurement thinker that means you hit about 62 mph tops.  Folks do not often speed in NZ—they do use camera speed traps, plus the roads just don’t support going much faster.  Of course, there are still the odd nutballs on the road.  But in general, like all things in New Zealand, there are just fewer people to deal with.

The drive was beautiful on every leg of the journey.  Most of the highway was close enough to the Tasman Sea to see the water.  If we couldn’t see the water then we were weaving between dramatic hill sides.  It was 183 km to Wanganui and that took a bit over 3 hours to do.

Wanganui was a pretty cute town.  The downtown area was lovely and full of vibrant classic architecture.  But it was pretty obvious that business was way down.  Many main street shops were vacant.  The town is bisected by the Whanganui River the south side of which is dominated by high hills.  There is a great tower overlooking the city.  Farther up the river was an amazing children’s playground with acres of unique play equipment and the biggest flying fox (zip line) I’ve ever seen.

We stayed at a modest motel with a restaurant.  It was functional, but otherwise unremarkable.  Of course Gabe loved the pool more than anything else.

We played at the beach one night and that was heaps of fun.  There were pretty big waves on this western coast of island.  One of the more interesting features (to me) of NZ beaches is black sand--miles and miles of black sand beaches with glints of gold that sparkle in the sun.  Gabe and I played in the surf really only wading.  The water is still pretty chilly, but it was a pretty hot day.  On the next day of the trip we stopped briefly in Patea to look at the ocean and that was stunning.  10-15’ swells crashed on long beach.  Patea is also a river mouth town but its river is “protected” by a funnel formed between two sea walls.  The protection was slight as the wave fully crashed over the tops of the walls.  Surfers were using them to walk out past the breakers before jumping in to catch waves.  The whole thing looked pretty dodgy, but then most surfers pride themselves at being nuts.  Even so, I’m totally going back to Patea someday to play in the waves and explore the beaches.

One highlight of day 2 was visiting the Tawhiti Museum in Hawera just south of Mount Taranaki.  This was an unbelievably cool museum about 19^th century New Zealand.  There were the most amazing stories about the Maori of the region as well as other figures of Taranaki history both mild and bold.  Interested folks should definitely wiki for Kimball Bent and the Taranaki Land Wars.  Great stuff!

The goal of the drive was to see the mountain.  Taranaki is awe inspiring.  It is a single peak that rises from a flat plain.  The day started out partly overcast so we really couldn’t see it as we approached, but eventually the heat of the day burned off the clouds and we were left with a stunning view.  Mt Taranaki is a common peak to climb in New Zealand being fairly low (8000 feet) and easy to get to.  But even so it claims the lives of unprepared climbers every year and most recently just a few months ago when a Japanese guide died after being caught in a storm.  We’re not mountain climbers… we just drove to the parking lot of Dawson Falls and gawked at the views.

On the evening of Day 2 we drove up to a beautiful scenic overlook just a bit inside the Whanganui National Park.  I wanted to show my folks the stars in the night sky of our remote country.  They did not disappoint.  We got there a bit too early to see the full effect, but we stuck it out until the Milky Way was fully visible.  Even cooler we remembered our binoculars.  It was a moonless night and the view was spectacular.  At one point we had to walk down the road a piece to see the Southern Cross constellation behind a cliff.  We then discovered we could see glow worms in the woods off the road.  So it was cool stars *and* glow worms.  That was pretty cool.

Day 3 was probably the biggest adventure.  The road to the scenic overlook was actually the start of a 50 km scenic drive along the Whanganui River to a little dot called Pipiriki.  The road was a bit more twisty than the average NZ road, but it was still paved so we decided to try it.  The drive was pretty amazing.  At one point we had to navigate a small herd of cattle on the road, but that was easy to laugh off.  Then the paved road gave way to gravel.  Hmmmm… not nearly as much fun.  I had to really slow down.  The road continued to be scenic, but got even more twisty and then it got quite bumpy as well.  Soon it was obvious these roads washed out often and construction was ongoing.  Many places the road narrowed to only the width of my small car.  I have no idea how the large construction trucks managed.  In several place the road was so poor I was forced to drag the centre of the car on the loose gravel due to the deep wheel ruts.  It took us about 3 hours to make the 50 km to Pipiriki.  This dot turned out to be little more than an old Koro’s* trailer snack shop.  He was a fun old coot.  We took the faster highway back, but even that took more than an hour only to return us right back to Wanganui where we started our drive home… another 3 hours.

It was a long day of driving, but I couldn’t ask for better country side to look at.  Plus we would have missed out on the friendly Koro.  The Taranaki region of the North Island may appear to lack the charms of the more expansive South Island wilderness, but I have to highly recommend it.  I think it will surprise you.

*Koro means “male elder” in Maori.  He also gave free lollies to all “mokopuna” in his shop (grandchildren).