Picton to New Plymouth and Mount Taranaki

There’s going to be two days in this blog, mostly because yesterday we really just travelling and wasn’t particularly eventful. We were up at 5am to catch the ferry from Picton (South Island) to Wellington (North Island) yesterday. We booked the Interislander rather than Bluebridge this time as our discount made it cheaper, and I probably preferred it over our previous journey too. For a start it was very prompt and actually got us to Wellington slightly early, and it was probably more comfortable. They could have done with a different tv channel though. Initially there was news (fine) but it quickly changed to a series of telesales adverts (kool grill, total gym and some mega amazing fishing line) which repeated over and over. Slightly dull. It was slightly rougher than our previous trip too so Amelia wasn’t on top form (when she went to the toilet apparently there was someone throwing up which obviously didn’t help either). 

The subsequent drive was entirely uneventful. It took about 4 and a half to 5 hours in the end, of which Amelia spent a portion of this asleep so missed out on the audiobook we’ve been listening to. I occasionally veered onto the rumble strips to wake her from her slumber. We lunched at a pretty uninspiring spot next to a busy road and arrived at New Plymouth at 5ish. Both pretty shattered we just did nothing, ate and headed to bed, hoping that a very noisy group of people would leave their park bench adjacent to our site very soon.

Views from the mountain

Fortunately they did, and we were up at 10 minutes to 6 for a (very) rushed breakfast in order to get over to the end of the Pouakai Crossing at Mount Taranaki for 7am where our shuttle would pick us up to take us to the start, the same arrangement as we had at Tongariro. Mount Taranaki is a cartoon of a volcano, it’s the most volcano looking volcano I’ve ever seen. Apparently it can pass for Mount Fuji in Japan as well, and actually played Mount Fuji in The Last Samurai. The Pouakai Crossing is a 7-9 hour hike across Mount Taranaki and the Pouakai mountain range beyond. So had both views out across the landscape and back towards the volcano. 

Mount Taranaki with the marsh in the foreground

Getting to the start at Egmont National Park visitors centre we drove through a thick bank of fog which was a solid layer across the landscape below us when we begun. The hike itself starts as a steep, stepped track directly towards the volcano, which takes a route around its perimeter with steep drops to your right. The track was only fully opened again this week after some serious landslides and it was pretty obvious where these had happened. New staircases and barriers aided our route around these obstacles until we descended slightly towards a marsh, and once across this up and down the Pouakai mountain and back to the van. Probably one of my favourite hikes we’ve done so far, maybe because it was actually quite easy (definitely a lot harder if you went the other way) and the weather was absolutely beautiful. The views out over the surrounding landscape with the clouds below were amazing and, once we were off the mountain, the views of Mount Taranaki itself were beautiful. The band of clouds below us gradually burned away so the landscape opened up to us once we were on our final descent, just before we entered thick forest so couldn’t see out at all in the last hour or so. 

We didn’t find an appropriate lunch spot on our way down the mountain so ate it sitting next to the car park, so not the most scenic spot. The tarmac was actually melting it was so hot. From here we just headed back to the campsite, had a couple of beers, cooked up an unnecessarily large amount of pasta (free from one of the campsites) and made a dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. Now just resting up before heading to Waitomo tomorrow to go caving to see glow worms. Exciting.