We left our site around 10:30 to head to the West Coast and New Plymouth. I had warned Jon after looking at the map that I thought most of the roads we'd be travelling on today would not be paved and would be kinda "out there" in the middle of no where.
I wish I hadn't been right about that one...
It took us roughly 4 hours to go about 200 kilometers (less than 100 miles). Many of the roads we drove on were super windy, curvy, dirt roads in the middle of no where that took us around the sides of mountains and up and down them as well. It was INSANE. And I'm not quite sure how we made it out of there... There were whole stretches of time where you wouldn't see another car. There were whole stretches of time without seeing ANYTHING or ANYONE...ok well, maybe a few sheep or a cow here or there...but other than that - NOTHING. It was crazy! And honestly, I felt fairly sick driving up and down those roads.
Another issue we encountered? While driving through the tiniest of towns (literally "Population:30"), we came to an overpass...that our van was TOO TALL FOR!!!!! The van is 3 meters high and the overpass sign said it could only accommodate vehicles up to 2.13 meters tall!!!!
Fortunately Jon is quick on his feet (and in the driver's seat) and was able to reroute us to a different road so we wouldn't be stuck in Tiny Town, NZ!!
Suffice it to say we were both BEYOND excited when we reached Highway 3!
We arrived in New Plymouth around 2 pm, found our campsite for the night (a parking lot overlooking the ocean - quite pretty), and headed to...where else? The information center!
New Zealand REALLY has a grasp on this whole tourism thing - their i-sites are AMAZING and the people there are usually super informative and helpful at pointing out the best things to do in the area. A quick stop at the i-site, where we checked in with family via their free internet (thanks NZ government!) and we learned there were basically two things we needed to see/do in New Plymouth - the free museum right above the i-site, and the local park. Done and Done.
We wandered around Puke Ariki, the free museum of New Plymouth for about 2 hours. They had exhibits on the local flora and fauna, Maori culture, immigration in NZ, and NZ history (including the history of dairy farming...). They also had a temporary exhibit on the sun which was quite hands on and SO fun. We spent a good chunk of time learning about the properties of the sun and playing lots of games along with the other 10 year olds in the room :-p. The coolest game they had was a strip where you could run as fast as you could at a padded wall and it would tell you how long it would take you to run to the sun at that speed. It would take me about 1,411 days. NBD. Jon? About 1,100 days. Jon said he'd keep the sun warm for me while he waited the YEAR for me to get there...!
The other awesome piece of the exhibit on the sun?? They had a VIRTUAL REALITY headset!! In it, you were an astronaut flying from the sun to the planets in the solar system and you could see facts about each of the planets. I had never experienced virtual reality like that before. It was SO COOL!! Needless to say we thoroughly enjoyed our time in the sun :).
From the museum we walked through town to their big city park, Pukerera Park. The park is quite beautiful, with a cricket pitch at its entrance and a pretty big lake in the middle of it that you can walk around and over via two bridges. We wandered around the park for about a half an hour before we decided we were too hungry for these shenanigans and it was time for dinner.
We had decided we would treat ourselves to one nice night out while in New Zealand. We both claim that our dinner in Palmerston North didn't count since we were kinda forced to eat out when our van broke down. Also, we'd wanted to go out to eat in Wellington, figuring the food scene there would be nice, buttttt couldn't bring ourselves to stay another day until dinner since we knew we wanted to leave and explore other areas of the country... sooooooo dinner in New Plymouth it was!
We wandered around trying to find a restaurant and finally settled on Finneran's, a pub which Jon had read about in our travel book and which ticked our "must haves" - steak, burgers, and beer :). We ordered dinner andddd I was more than a little bummed to find that my burger had things on it that I hadn't ordered...namely several additional vegetables and barbeque sauce. It's fine if I ORDER a burger that has BBQ sauce on it...but who just PUTS it on there without telling you it's gonna be there? Also, ketchup in other parts of the world is NO WHERE near as good as ketchup in the US. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't care. Our ketchup is better. One thing I am DEFINITELY looking forward to - going to restaurants and receiving the food I order and knowing it will be delicious always (ok, usually :-p).
After dinner we walked the shoreline back to our beautiful campsite and were lucky enough to catch a GORGEOUS sunset when we arrived! We watched the sunset over the ocean until it was quite dark and then headed in for an early tuck in. Lots of travelling to do tomorrow!
Jess' highlight of the day: the Sun exhibit at the museum and the beautiful sunset!
Jon's highlight of the day: finally arriving in New Plymouth
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