Attempt at Mount Taranaki *fail*

So here was the original plan: renting a car again for the weekend and driving to Egmont National Park (near New Plymouth) and tramping (hiking) Mount Taranaki aka the most dangerous of all mountains to climb in New Zealand. We were planning on getting there and doing some light hiking for the rest of the day then camping out for the night.

Then on Saturday flipping morning we would get up around 5 am and depart for the summit by 6 am. It says it is about a 8-10 hour return tramp, so we would be done by around 4 pm. Then we would just hike some other stuff or relax or find something cool to do. Then Sunday we would probably check out New Plymouth and maybe a beach and chill, until leaving to drive back around 4pm. We would be back in Hamilton around 7pm. It would be $60 for the car for the weekend and then gas money.

That was the plan.

We even bought beer with mountains on the can. Serious.

From Hamilton (Waikato University) it is about a 4 hour drive to Egmont National Park, along the way we stopped at a really cool spot along the coast with black sand beaches, and coves, and these sand rock ledges.

So happy to be sleeping in a rental car

So we get all the way there and it started to rain, so we set up camp at the base camp... in our Juicy rental car. You never really realize just how uncomfortable sleeping in a car is until you actually spend an entire night. We figured that the rain would clear up by the morning and that we would carry on with the plan of tramping Mt. Taranaki.


Rather, it just rained like NUTS for the entire weekend. Since hiking one of the most dangerous tramps (which also happens to be a volcano) in all of New Zealand with pouring down rain, flooding streams and massive wind gusts that shook the car sounded like a totally kick ass time, we decided to sit Mount Taranaki out this time so we could live to make it to the top next time. So what we did instead was to decide to explore New Plymouth, and just see what happens. We head into town to find a cafe to warm up and talk with some locals to find out what to do in New Plymouth. The cafe lady told us about all sorts of stuff like a parade (rain or shine, these New Zealander's don't let some rain ruin a good time), a park, and a hipster movie theater.

Aaron and Alexandria becoming art.

We ended up finding this really cool free modern art exhibit in town where you put on these stripped suits and jump about in an equally stripped bouncy castle like we did when we were five. It was just as awesome as it was then.

We then found this really interesting free museum that had the funniest looking animals that I have ever seen, along with some really funny captions.

My all time favorite is the dramatic morepork owl. If you don't get the reference click the word "dramatic" and get up to date on your funny as internet videos.

Meet Tiny

 A very close second is an entire case dedicated to "the tiny terror of New Zealand"  aka a weasel.  *HAVOC*

We went and found a sweet as organic brewery called Mike's. I talked with Mike (as seen here) about brewing and he get super excited that I know all sorts of stuff about brewing, he showed me about his operations and we talked for a few hours about brewing beer. I'll do a separate post on Mike's in a bit.

After Mike's we headed off to go find Mount Damper Falls. Why did we want to go find Mt. Damper Falls? Because we saw a brown sign on the highway that said "Mt. Damper Falls" with arrows. Little did we know that we accidentally found the second tallest waterfall in all of New Zealand!

On the way back we attempted to give a hitch hiking local a ride... but we got denied so hard.





Here are other goodies from the weekend.