Errand Day

Today we completed a lot of errands that we'd been putting off. This morning while Jon went for a run, I straightened up the van a bit. When he got back we ate a quick breakfast and set off for the dump station and to find water to refill the van. We found the dump station right away, but unfortunately there was no water. We drove around to a few stops that our app told us had water andddd there was none to be found. Awesome. Since we basically have none. We even stopped at a paid campsite to ask if we could pay for water. The woman's response? "You can pay $48 for water since we assume you either could have filled up last night and didn't or parked for free in town so you an afford to get water here for one night's paid rate. We do NOT support "freedom camping"" (aka when the city allows you to park for free around town.) Thanks for the attitude love! Truly appreciated!...

We decided to forget about water for the time being and move on to our next errand - grocery shopping.

Look what I found in the grocery store - the New Zealand equivalent of "chocolate covered Easter bunnies" aka "chocolate covered Easter kiwis!"

After a quick trip we were off to Mt. Taranaki in Egmont National Park!

Mt. Taranaki is proclaimed by our guidebook as "the most climbed mountain in New Zealand" due to its wide array of hikes and treks, anywhere from 15 minutes to 5 days. The mountain, nee volcano, is located about 40 km southwest of New Plymouth. We arrived there around 11:45 and, after soaking up some free internet, prepared ourselves for the Veronica Loop, a 2-hour hike to a scenic lookout (one hour there, one hour back). We packed our lunches, cameras, and bottles of water and we were off!

The hike was not NEARLY as scenic as our hike at Tongariro National Park two days ago. The path was well forged, however, the trees were so low hanging you could barely see anything besides forest/jungle the entire walk. No fun! So we trekked and trekked, every so often stopping to look for Kiwi in the bush (unfortunately we had no Kiwi sightings. Womp womp.) At one point, after we'd been walking about 30 minutes, there was a fairly nice view down below, so we stopped to take a few pictures...

Jon joked how funny it would be if this turned out to be the vista. I told him the vista point that I'd seen "advertised" at the i-site had tables and a really nice viewing spot. So we forged on.

We had been walking for exactly 56 minutes of our 2-hour journey when we heard people! Huzzah! We'd reached the lookout point! We made our way through the trees and found ourselves...back at the beginning!! Turns out Jon had been right and the "fabulous vista" that had been advertised was the random viewing spot where we happened to take a picture!

The whole time we'd been walking I'd been thinking...it said the hike was an hour and a half to two hours long. How could we not be at the vista yet? We had kinda been booking it in the whole time, but definitely hadn't realized we'd been walking THAT fast. Oy.

When we got back to the information center we decided to eat our lunches with a lovely view of the volcano (although at this point most of it was obscured by clouds). After we ate and soaked up a bit more internet, we climbed back into the van and started making our way to... Waitomo Caves!

For the next 3 hours we drove through BEAUTIFUL scenery. Seriously. I was driving and woke Jon up 3 times as I veered off the road (jk - I'm a good driver - I signaled and pulled over!) to look at the gorgeous vistas :).

The drive was stunning, with vistas moving back and forth between mountain peaks and the ocean. And not NEARLY as windy as yesterday!!! We got to the town of Waitomo at 4:45, popped into the visitor's center to schedule a few tours for tomorrow (the area is known for its caves - more on that tomorrow!) and then headed to our campsite for the night. Tonight we're staying at a paid site, which does provide for some fantastic amenities including...LAUNDRY AND SHOWERS!! Oh the little things that can make you happy :). After our fantastic, hot showers we cooked dinner in the kitchen on site (SO MUCH ROOM), did laundry, hung some clothes out to dry (hope we remember them when we leave tomorrow!), played some cards (Jon FINALLY beat me in a game of Phase 10!), drank some wine (until we accidentally knocked the bottle over...Roxanne is a little too small for two people sometimes...), and got ready for bed.

Tomorrow - time to explore the caves!

Jess' and Jon's highlight of the day: our scenic drive