Taranaki

In the morning we left Wiatomo and headed into the Taranaki region to New Plymouth. It was a nice drive. We even stopped to take a picture along the way. There were lots of cool little cliff sides along the way like this one:



After a couple of hours we made it to New Plymouth. Unfortunately the bad weather at Mt Taranaki prevented us from making a trip to see one of the major attractions in the Taranaki region (in fact we never once saw the mountain the entire day we were there even though we were less than 20 miles away from it). After visiting the information center we decided to go hike up Paritutu (which has a nice view of the area), then go to Pukekura Park and Brooklands Zoo.

Paritutu was pretty cool. We had to climb up part of the way with a chain to help us up the side of the hill. At the top had a great view of the beaches.

Here is Marian going up the hill side:




Here we are at the top of Paritutu:



Here is the view of the city:




Here is a picture of the coast:



After words we went to Pukekura Park and walked through the gardens. There was a nice little lake in the middle of the park.



Eventually we made our way to the Brooklands Zoo. There were a handful or farm animals and a nice collection of birds. The monkeys were entertaining as well but the most amusing animal was the otter. He was running around his cage in frustration. Here are our friends from the day:






After the zoo we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to Wellington around the coastal highway 45.