(written on February 5th from notes taken previously).
First stop of the day was going over to Te Rewa Rewa bridge, the one we got to the parking lot, I noticed there were some recycling bins and trash bins, so we disposed of our recycling and trash. 🎉
Then we headed over to the bridge itself. Cool little bridge, over River and right before the ocean, and on a clear day, you can see Mount Taranaki in the distance, which makes for a pretty cool picture with the bridge in the foreground and the mountain in the background.
Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day, so there was no view of the mountain through the bridge.
We stopped off at a gas station to get gas and for him to check the air in his tires, as he was a little worried that one of them was low, but it didn’t look low to me, so we continued on.
Bought some groceries at the Pack ‘N Save, including a box of popsicles that I bought, and then we headed over to a road that runs along a little Park with the ocean on one side and an old folks home on the other.
We stayed there for a little bit and then decided to head on over to Back Beach to chill for a bit.
I got lost a little bit, as there were two different Back Beach locations, but I quickly realized my mistake and headed over to where Raphael was going.
Back Beach is right next to Paritutu Rock, a pretty tall rock formation just outside of New Plymouth. We thought about hiking to the top, but we were also wanting to do some hiking up Taranaki today, so we decided to leave it off today’s schedule, instead just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful views of Back Beach, snapping some pictures and chatting.
Knowing that another hike was on the docket, I’m not wanting to deal with chaffing, we stopped over at Woolworths, the most expensive grocery store in New Zealand, but the only place where I absolutely knew I could get baby powder. 🙃
I also bought Vaseline.
I’m now ready for more hiking. 😁
I wasn’t really interested in hiking to the top of Mount Taranaki again, having done that with Chase during my last trip to New Zealand. One of the places I did want to visit was the Pouakai Circuit Reflective Tarn–a small lake that you can sometimes see the reflection of Mount Taranaki in.
So he and I headed over, parked in the car park, and headed on up.
We chatted along the way, Raphael getting a kick out of me guessing the home countries of the different travelers as we passed them going opposite directions. He was surprised when I sometimes had trouble identifying Germans simply by their faces, as it was pretty easy for him. 🙃
The hike up the mountain was steady and pretty easy, and the temperature was great… until we got out of the forest that was shielding us from the very cold wind. 💨
🙃
I was actually wearing shorts (a bit unusual for me since my sun-aging realizations and fears hit me so hard), so by the time we got up to the main hut (or one of the main huts?) on this side of the mountain, I was ready for a little warm up in the very nice “hut.”
Much grass, NZ, much grass.
After a little bit of a warm up, we continued up the trail to a pretty good viewpoint.
Both of us were pretty underwhelmed when we realized that the reflection lake is more of a reflection pond, and a small one at that.
A couple hundred meters, or so, from the ridge we were standing on was the tiny little tarn. 😆
With it being as small as it was, and with the wind howling as much as it was, which would create innumerable ripples in the little tarn, removing any possibility of seeing the reflections of the mountain in it, we made the decision not to bother walking down the slope the rest of the way to the pond.
Instead, I hunkered down between some bushes and the walkway to try and get at least somewhat out of the cold wind while we waited for clouds to move enough to open up some halfway decent views of the volcano.
After walking down, we headed over to what we thought would be a good freedom camping spot for the night at Pukeiti, but the bathrooms were indoor and locked, which isn’t much of a problem for me, as I have my bottle and micro john, but it was a problem for Raphael.
We did manage to figure out the issue that Raphael was having. There was something in his vehicle that was just… smelly… and it was getting worse.
We went on a little sniffing expedition and struggled to figure out where the smell was coming from, but the eventually found it coming from his gray water tank.
Oh man, it was nasty. 🤢
😆
One more reason I’ve never used my tanks: If you never use it, you don’t have to clean it. 🙃
With his tank emptied out and tentatively, temporarily sealed up to block the stench, we headed over to the Okato domain for the night.
I ate canned food, and he cooked dinner and we chatted a fair bit more before calling it a night.
Not as many steps as yesterday, but still some good travels for the day.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 