West Coast

Today we left the ‘Hotel Hocking’ (Scott and Karen’s house) after a fantastic night of pampering, for me that involved a hot bath (even though it was a really hot night) for Will it was eating his body weight in Thai food and for Sam it was lying in bed with a cat, watching telly and eating chocolate covered peanuts... bliss. So we were very sad to leave all our new friends this morning and head of on our own again. As Sam said himself ‘it’s not nice to say goodbye’ but on we go to a new adventure.

We drove across the country headed for New Plymouth and wound through gorges and the usual telly tubby hills. But this time there were much more people around and towns with more than two houses and a random sheep, hoorah, civilisation! The jewel in the crown however was Mount Taranaki which is a huge volcano which loomed before us like something from a film, beautifully lit by the sun with a bit of cloud just below the peak and snow glistening around the top (and fortunately no smoke – it hasn’t erupted since the 1700’s thank god). We stopped at a campsite by the sea and Sam is now sat with Will doing his maths (well, actually Will has just made him cry) and I have been reading my new Xmas book and am about to make a salmon salad, we still need healthy food to detox from our Xmas overeating/drinking binge! Tomorrow we will continue around this peninsula along the ‘Surf Highway’ towards New Plymouth.

I wrote that the other day but we had no internet to publish so have an extra update... today we got up and drove further around the 'Surf Highway' it really is very pretty over here. We stopped at a place called Stent Road which is apparently the best wave in NZ and Will had a brilliant surf, it was a 5 star day (which means the waves were brilliant) not so amazing for me and Sam though as it rained quite heavily whilst we were waiting in the van but we passed the time by learning French and then had a bowl of porridge to warm up. After Will's surf the sun came out and we found another beach for Sam to surf at, it's nice to get back into a routine again. We are now on a campsite in New Plymouth and Will is cooking and Sam is skateboarding. New Plymouth seems to have a fair bit going on so I think we will stay around here for a while. There is a 10k walkway which has been built along the coast so we will probably have a stroll along that tomorrow as well as a surf and possibly a horse ride. Pic attached Xmas Day when we put out the Kontiki.