Rogerson's on the Road

Ok, so with this next statement I might be leaving myself open to ridicule but this would not be the first time nor I guess the last, but let me ask a question - New Zealand, hot or cold? My guess would be, it depends on the time of year. But being close to the South Pacific and neighbouring Oz, which we all asume to be hot, I would have said, "New Zealand - hot." Wrong! New Zealand is, for the most part cold and wet. We have arrived at the end of the winter and are heading into spring, in fact we changed the clocks the other day to Day light savings - we are now 12 hours ahead of the UK.

So on our next leg of the journey, armed with bed socks and thermal underwear - I am not kidding, we spent a fortune in Kathmandu (NZ's equivalent to Millets) and with our fantastic tans from Fiji a dim and distant memory, we head to the far west of NZ's North Island to New Plymouth. The drive from Napier is a bit of a mammoth effort so we stop in a small town called Whanganui (fang-ga-noo-e). We arrive on a cool sunny Saturday afternoon to Tamara lodge, a lovely colonial timber built lodge on the river. Our room has a massive bed and a beautiful high ceiling. The town closes on a Saturday (as do most small towns in NZ) at 2pm in the afternoon, so out come the walking shoes again and we head up to the highest point in the area via an evelator that goes up through the the hill. Great view of not a lot really.

The next day we head off to New Plymouth which is famed for Mount Egmont. It is the most perfectly shaped mountain. The drive from Whanganui to New Plymouth takes you on the Surf Highyway and the whole way round you are driving around the bottom of the mountain, almost like a mountain ring round. However, we saw neither the ocean nor the mountain. At one point we think that we saw the sea....it was the dark bit between the grey sky and the greyer land.....I think that we will just have to say that this part of our trip was a bit of a wash out. Our back up plan for a wet day came into action once again and we headed for the cinema. Cinderella Man was the chosen film - good film for a rainy day.

Sorry folks nothing to say here......

Off to Wellington!