Arrived in Startford, the hometown of our host Chris, we first informed us about potential walking tracks. The highlight of this area is Mt Taranaki (or Mt. Egmont for the locals) in the Taranaki National Park. It is with almost 2600m the highest of a range of volcanos, most of them still active. Statistically, Mt Egmont erupts every 250 years (the last time exactly 250 years ago, so keep your fingers crossed for us :-O ). It is quite famous, because it is the most perfect mountain of the world, besides Mt. Fukushima in Japan. Perfect means “as a child would draw a mountain” or in order to use a more scientific term, a perfect cone. It’s amazing, how close it is to this shape even though some hundred years ago an eruption at Fanthams Peek destroyed it a bit. However, having the right point of view, one will see the perfect shape. The more difficult part is to actually see it, because similar to Mt. Cook, many tourists never see it, as it’s always covered with clouds. We had, however, some hope to see it completely, because Claire (from Wellington) told us a myth about the mountain. You would always see it, if you have companion of someone who is a member of the Taranaki Tribe (a tribe of the Maoris). We had the hope that it is enough to know Karl (the husband of Claire) who has the right ancestors and additionally we were supposed to stay with a local.
Arrived at Chris (51) we were welcomed by his two sons who enjoyed their last weekend of school holidays. Chris is the owner of a dairy farm and that’s why he was busy with milking cows together with his German wwoofer Isabell when we arrived (for all of you who don’t know the term WWOOF = willing workers on organic farms. It’s quite similar to helpx, which is our favourite). Ones they were finished we got invited for dinner. This is quite unusual for couchsurfing, because we’re used to supply our own food (and we already bought something). Later, Chris explained us why. He is quite laid back and additionally he would be very pleased if we could help out with some milking (what he already mentioned in one of his messages). That’s why we got on the roster for milking for the next evening. We found that’s quite a fair deal, if you think that we had to work maybe 1 ½ hours in total and got two dinners in return 🙂 Of course we got more in touch with him and also Isabelle, exchanged some stories and made a plan for the next two days.
Since the weather wasn’t very good the next day, we drove to New Plymouth, the next bigger city in and around Taranaki. There are black sand beaches, and a bridge which frames Mt Egmont like a post card. Of course we made a picture of that (and we even got a group of Indians on the picture which made the shot even more perfect :-[ ]. Besides that, we visited the local museum in order to get some more detailed information about the geology of the mountain (which we proved at the beginning of the post, didn’t we?). Back in Stratford we were part of the milking team for this evening, which was a very fun experience (mostly because Chris was just super relaxed and funny). By the way, at the same morning a new Wwoofer, Sophie from France, arrived as Isabelle needed to leave the next morning.
The first two days, the mountain was actually always partly covered by clouds (we even got it to take a picture with ONLY the summit free of clouds!). You can call it prove of the myth, luck or just enough patience. We saw Mt. Egmont completely the third day and decided to climb the smaller peak (Fantham’s Peak), because the summit of Mt. Egmont was still covered with snow and not climbable without alpine equipment (we even saw some rescue helicopters during the day). We began walking in sunshine and cloudless sky, but after around an hour we suddenly were surrounded by clouds and fog. As it was supposed to be clear the whole day, we wanted to try our luck regardless and continued (the track to the summit is around 3 ½ hour). Unfortunately we weren’t lucky this time and we had to give it a miss only 300m below the peak. There is no track anymore, just gravel and a 45° climb with a sign every couple of hundred meters which shows you where to go. The clouds became so thick that we weren’t able to see further than 20m and we found it to dangerous and turned back. It was quite an adventure anyway and we would definitely recommend doing it!
We had another very nice evening with Chris and Sophie and said good bye the next morning in order to drive to Taupo taking the “Forgotten World Highway”. You find the name is quite strange? The same for us…We asked Chris if he knows the sense behind the name, and he just answered that the area is just almost lifeless and forgotten. Quite soon we figured out what he meant. The road is around 150km long, but there is nothing along it except some farms and two villages with maybe 100 citizens. The “highway” is even unsealed for 15km. It doesn’t sound very interesting, but it’s maybe the most beautiful road we took since we’re in New Zealand. The landscape is just as you would imagine New Zealand and finally in a bigger scale. Juicy green hills everywhere! The unsealed part goes through a gorge with native forest what made it even better. We stopped so often to take pictures or just to enjoy the view and it took us almost 4h to drive the 150km but it was definitely worth it! At the end of the highway short after the city of Taurangi there are again some hot pools. Bathing is only possible if you pay for it, but there is a nice walk around which was quite cool. Beside hot water there were also some boiling mud pools! Finally we drove the road along Lake Taupo to the city Taupo. What happened there, is part of the next post…