Taranaki and New Plymouth

Monday 2^nd April is another warm, sunny day so we’ve decided to drive to New Plymouth about 2-3 hours drive from Wanganui.  We will be spending the day in the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island.  As we drive west, the landscape becomes dominated by the volcano of Mt Taranaki which is 2,518m high.  It used to be called Mt Egmont and is surrounded by the Egmont National Park.  It can be seen for over 100kms and looms large over New Plymouth which is on its north-western slopes.  We drive through some quite flat farming country which has been raised from the sea bed.  We stop off for coffee at Opanake which has murals pained on several buildings.  There’s also a statue of champion middle distance runner Peter Snell who came from here.  He won 3 Olympic gold medals and several Commonwealth Games gold medals in 800m and 1,500m races.  

A brief detour to the coastal lookout the get some photos of the coastal scenery and we’re back on our way to New Plymouth – with several stops to take photos of the mountain.

New Plymouth has an excellent visitors centre and museum so we called in there to see the latest exhibition.  This was a series of lithographs which interposed Maori and classical myths.  It was very interesting to see Socrates and Aesop on a Greek vase together with Maori designs.  We spent quite a bit of time in the museum last year and we were impressed by the exhibits – especially the one about vulcanology.  This city is truly in the shadow of a great volcano.  Most volcanoes in NZ would be classified as “active”, having erupted in the past 50,000 years.  Mt Taranaki last erupted only about 150 years ago, and Mt Ruapehu only 17 years ago.  The enormous Taupo volcano erupted about 2,000 years ago when it created the huge crater lake, Lake Taupo which is about 40kms across. White Island has been erupting for quite a few years, creating a new island in the Bay of Plenty near Whakatane.  New Zealand is geologically very active.  In addition to the many volcanoes, earthquakes are a daily occurrence.  Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, was devastated by an earthquake in February 2011 when over 200 people were killed.  Many buildings were damaged and thousands of people have lost their homes.  Repair works will take many years to complete.  There are many tourist sites focused around geothermal activity with hot springs, boiling mud and geysers in Rotorua.  People from all over the world used to visit the Pink and White Terraces until they were destroyed by earth movements in the late 1800s.  There are only a few photos of these magnificent features and their location has only recently been rediscovered.  On our drive back to Wanganui we completed the circumnavigaton of Mt Taranaki as we drove around the eastern side of the mountain back to the highway.  It certainly is spectacular.