Taranaki Touring. Part 2

Day two of our adventure away started with a somewhat unplanned walk. We had decided to check out a lake that was on the way to where we were heading that day. When we got there we found out it was a fully fenced reserve with double electric gates and huge pest proof fences, I forgot to take photos but it was pretty surreal having to drive through.
Once we were in we had a mooch at the info boards and then decided to go for a 10 minute walk along the lake trail but once we started we figured we may as well carry on and it took us an hour to complete the circuit. It was a nice walk through native bush with plenty of bird song and the sound of ducks on the water. There were no mammals to see though as New Zealand has no native land based animals.

Being so close to the mountain meant that we had to go check it out, unfortunately the weather wasn't the best so I couldn't get any great pictures but it was still a nice drive. We drove up to one of the car parks and then took a short 20 minute walk to Dawson Falls which was very pretty and we met a nice family at the base who took our pictures for us and we returned the favour. I still get surprised about how friendly New Zealand people are sometimes.

To finish off the day we did a tour around the coastline, the highlight of which was seeing the Cape Egmont lighthouse.

The next day we went into the town of New Plymouth for a look around. The first place we explored was Pukekura park which has lots of pretty pathways with visual features such as a nice bridge, a little waterfall and large old trees. We walked the length of the park until we got to the little free zoo that they have. It's mostly farm animals but I'm always happy with that. They also had some exotic birds, meercats, otters and monkeys. We took a walk along the coastal pathway as well although we didn't really enjoy it as there was a lot of bike traffic but none of them had bells so it felt like we were constantly watching our backs trying not to get run over by bikes. It was pleasant scenery though and on the way back we stumbled across a Truck gathering. It was pretty cool, I've never seen so many big rigs all in one place. I think the best one though was a child size one that the kids could climb into the trailer of to get a ride around the fair. Very cute

When we got back to the farm that night we fed all the animals and then took the quad out for a ride. We followed the tracks for quite a long way and found a whole heap of mushrooms on the way. It was all quite exciting in a novel kind of way since neither of us had been on a quad for awhile and I always love collecting mushrooms.