Christmas and New Years (and a proper volcano)

Up to Palmy for Christmas. Cousin Thomas was over from the UK, and lovely to see him again. We gave eachother a poker set (identical) and it saw quite a lot of use over the next few days. Irritatingly, Maaike, once introduced to the game did quite well. I have a theory (Theory A) which has as it’s axiom:

1) Boys don’t like loosing to girls.

Therefore, in a poker bidding war, boys will continue to up the stakes against a girl. This leads to doom when your opponent does, actually, have a decent hand.

Anyway, it was lots of fun. We took the cousins on the Gorge walk, which is a 5 hour (easy) walk just outside of Palmy. I don’t think either my Aunt or cousins had done the walk in quite a long time. It’s a lovely walk, the perfect thing to work off some of the Christmas Turkey.

There were some excellent branches to swing on (if you’re < 70kg)

And some good views of the wind turbines throughout the area. I’m not quite sure where they come up with these stats.. but apparently this area of NZ has “the most reliable strongish wind patterns on the planet”. I’d like to see the sources for (Alisters) claim on that one!

Next it was off to Taranaki to meet up with our friends (and housemates) Steve and Michelle. Steve is from ‘the naki’ and understandably proud of a stunning part of the country. We met up in New Plymouth where we enjoyed the festival of lights. Even going for a row in a pirate boat! ARRRRGGGG

We also had a quick walk up to the top of an old leftover volcano.. and a nice view of the sea.

Next day it was off to Taranaki (Mt. Egmont) where we went on a 3 day tramp. The last time I was here was a long time ago (2003) with my friend Maeve. It’s a stunning place, gets metres of rain a year and is just wonderful. Mind you, last time I was here in the rain and it was much more pleasant this time around.

They’ve been carrying out some extensive stout trapping here. We saw hundreds of traps – but I think we only saw one actual capture. Still, bettern’ nuffink.

We visited a waterfall (Bells falls), and had stunning campsites for the premier of the pitching of our new tent (Macpac Olympus)

New Years eve was a little cold and windy, here a picture of Michelle responding to Steve’s request to pass his bag across, but not willing to risk getting out from under the sleeping bag. We woke up to these funny shaped clouds. I’m pretty sure they’re ‘lenticular’ clouds, and indicative of high winds.

After a quick breakfast we headed up the mountain to the top. It’s only a 1000m climb, but quite steep, quite hot, and with lots of scree. Technically it’s not hard (at least in summer), but claims the most lives each year. Probably ‘cos there’s lots of traffic on the mountain, and the weather can change very rapidly.

An excellent trip – really great to get to the top of a decent mountain again.