Making up for lost time

It felt very good to wake up today knowing we had a functioning camper once again. It's lucky we're travelling so long because it did mean we had to stay in Wellington for longer than we had initially planned. After packing up the van and saying goodbye and good luck to Barry we left the campsite and carried on driving north. The North Island is a lot wider than the South and there's things to do on both coasts and the centre so we're not too sure how we will drive around it yet to fit the most in we can. For now we know we want to visit Mt. Taranaki which is further up the west coast so our current plan is to make our way up there and stop off on the way. One town we wanted to visit was Whanganui so that's where we headed today. Nick had heard good things about the museum and after a couple of trips around the block to actually find it we then discovered it's currently closed while they do work to make the building earthquake proof. We weren't too sure what else to do here so we decided the best thing to do when you're not sure is have a lovely New Zealand pie. We headed to the local bakery where some coffee art wizard works who managed to create a little pig on Nick's coffee and really put my previous work to shame! Our parking allowed us a couple of hours to wonder around the town which had some very attractive buildings. Historic buildings are one thing you really miss seeing when you're from a country with so much history visiting such a young country in comparison. Near the river we found an art gallery so to escape the rain we thought we'd have a look around. You could really tell it was not a very well funded gallery and the pieces that they had on show were rather unusual and we weren't really impressed by any of them sadly. One girl had created lots of white and gold ceramic moths which did show a lot of skill so it wasn't all disappointing. We spent time in the i-site which was also here collecting many leaflets on areas up north and using the Wi-Fi to look into other bits and bobs. It soon came time to move the van and seeing as there wasn't much else to do here and discovering that high winds and bad weather was sweeping through the area we decided to do an afternoon of driving to take us up to New Plymouth. You really could feel the wind against the van as we drove. Our freedom camping spot for the night is a carpark near the beach just outside of town. We arrived just in time for sunset which turned all the clouds from grey to lovely pastel colours. Although it hasn't been a very exciting day it feels good to have made it quite far up the coast. Staying in Wellington did take up extra days so we managed to catch up a little today. Unfortunately there's a few cars hanging around the carpark with young people in so I'm hoping we don't get disturbed too much tonight. Tomorrow we plan to head around the area to see and explore the huge Mt. Taranaki that is just south of New Plymouth. Hopefully the weather passes through quickly and doesn't head up north.Read more