Hey, look! A volcano!

Today I saw a bird that runs like a T-rex. Though I haven't seen a tyrannosaurus rex run (surprising, I know!), so maybe it just ran how I imagine it would look. That was in a big park in Whanganoi (back to the wh-f's :p); they also had swans... and a great many ducks. Also some very cool trees, the first cedar trees I've noticed, and a big greenhouse appropriately called "the winter gardens" - that had a ficus. It didn't appear to be dropping any of its leaves... my ficus got quite upset in late January and was losing a massive number of leaves, so hopefully its doing okay now...

A sea-tractor? I assume it is dragging in
traps of some sort.
Paraparaumu

The North Island is noticeably more densely populated than the South - over three quarters of the population of the country live here. It seemed like every 10 to 20 k there would be a little town. Some of these were larger than others - I saw the cheapest gas I have yet seen in the town of Levin - 212.9!!! Usually its around 220 (feeding Tuck is not cheap haha - but he's pretty good on gas, about 6.7 l/100km.)

The sand along most of the west
coast beaches on the north island is
black (and sparkly)
since its all eroded lava flows :p
So there has been bright white sand,
light yellow, dark yellow/orange, and
black sand

Also on the drive up, I passed through a small town with not one but two house moving companies. We're not talking moving trucks with people to carry your furniture, here. We're talking about people who move houses. Each had a large lot next to their offices with several older houses sitting on blocks awaiting a new location. :p

When I arrived at the hostel, the lovely smell of baking cake greeted me. Mmmmm... Now, the best part of this is, we get to eat the cake! This hostel is super cute - they make volcano shaped chocolate cakes with white icing on top for snow whenever someone climbs Mount Egmont (Taranaki)... or just in case someone climbs it... nobody did today, in fact, I think everyone sitting here eating cake just got here today. So now everyone here gets to eat chocolate cake, which is awesome! They've got a cone-shaped cake pan for it... hmm, custom shaped cake pans... I wonder... A slight oversight on my part meant that I didn't even realize there was a huge mountain here (its really flat) until I came round the corner of a hill and BAM, there was a great big cone-shaped volcano sticking out of the ground. So tomorrow I'm going to go take a look around there (don't worry, mom, I'm not going to climb it by myself. I am grossly uninformed and know nothing about it :p ). Though if I ever come back it'll be on the list of things to do :p ).

Taranaki rising out of the flat fields
(Mt Egmont)

I don't know what kind of flowers these are,
but they grow EVERYWHERE, especially on
the North Island! White, pink, blue, purple...

I have now eaten my delightful slice of cake. Tomorrow I'll head over to Mount Egmont (again, don't worry mom, I'm going to the top) and follow some of the short little trails around the base. Apparently there is a "goblin forest" with twisted, mossy trees haha.

There is also a rather interesting museum down near the waterfront - I just popped in shortly when I got here today, but tomorrow afternoon I'll probably go through it properly, at which point I can give a rather more informed ramble on the area. Right now all I can say is something along the lines of pseudo-active volcano, giant shark fossils, moa kiwi more volcanoes erosion Gondwanaland plate lifting no more moa mini-t-rex-relative and snow is only for the mountain.

New Plymouth's equivalent to the sea wall

Yum, cake :)
Double yum because I may have stopped at the grocery store and procured a small container of ice-cream, so I got double dessert. :D

Cheers,



Marysa