The Dairy Factory by a Mountain — Waitara, New Zealand
What I did
New Plymouth
Surf Highway
Waitara
Eltham
Manaia
Stratford
Whangamomona
Speedway racing
First of all, really sorry this has taken so long to post. We've been without internet for 2 weeks and are now sitting in Subway using the main road's free WiFi!
We left Rosemary's house quite early, because no matter how short the journey would be, the drive from her house to the main road took an hour, so we needed to be quite quick!
We decided to go down the Forgotten World Highway - State Highway 43. This was quite cool because it meant going through a massive gorge, a tunnel and a pub in a place called Whangamomona. The residents there were fed up with the town changing counties constantly, so the pub decided to become a republic a few years ago. This meant we could get our passports stamped and eat a lot of food. We didn't do either. We were too embarrassed to get our passports out and the food was pretty expensive... a toasted sandwich each then!
The next place we got to was called Stratford. The founder was a Shakespeare nut obviously, and decided all the street names had to be named after characters from his plays. (Jess says: Not to be a snob, but this was horribly tacky. What has some quiet suburban street in the middle of nowhere called Lear Terrace got to do with the tragic, sparse beauty of King Lear?!)
We arrived at Fiona's house in Waitara at quite a good time- 3ish. Jess was driving and unfortunately we drove straight past it! We knew it was .71 kms along the road because NZ has this clever little thing where the house number equates to how far along the road the house is. Fiona lives at 71 Inland Road... Anyway, the reason we went straight past it was because she lives in an old factory. Which looks abandoned.
We rolled down the drive and Fiona came out of the garden. When we said we were the WWOOFers she mumbled woof woof under her breath...
We were shown up to our room, up a staircase/ladder to some attic space above the kitchen. There was a bolt on the bottom of the trap door.
We didn't have any phone signal and were told there was no WiFi either... I was getting ready to send an SOS message to Matt, saying if he didn't hear from me once a day, to call the police..
Luckily, around this time, Fiona's partner Cath came home, and she's much more sane. She told us the password for the WiFi that they did in fact have.
On Monday we woke up alive which was nice. There was work, but it was boring, so you shall not hear of it. For play we went into New Plymouth looking for a post office so Jess could send her massive letter to her grandma, and we also found a place called Puke Arika which is an isite and free museum all rolled into one. Unfortunately, we only had an hour's free parking so didn't get to see it all.
On Tuesday, we went with Fiona to the charity shop she helps run in Waitara. We spent 7 hours arranging books in the Corso shop. This was actually far more fun than it sounds, and meant we had the whole of Wednesday to ourselves.
We decided to go right the way round Mount Taranaki on the Surf Highway (State Highway 45). This was an adventure taking us along the coast about 130 miles. Our first stop was the Cape Egmont lighthouse on the most westerly place in the area. It was quite nice, but a bit windy so we dived back into the car and carried on.
Our next stop was in Manaia, where we knew there was a bakery. We bought some cookies and danish pastries! We then decided we wanted some lunch, so we went to the fish and chips
shop over the road. I ordered a hawiaan burger and Jess asked for a toasted sandwich.
Unfortunately, their card machine wouldn't accept our cards because they used the wrong settings. A walk up the road to the supermarket gave us a broken cash machine and no way of getting cash back from the till. We walked quickly back to let the lady know. She'd already made the burger and sandwich, so said we could just have them for free.
BRILLIANT! We gave her what change we had, and thanked her so many times.
Next we visited Harera, the southern most place on our little trip, because they have a massive old water tower, which you can now climb. We hadn't realised they charge you to do so, so we just took a picture and shot off!
The journey back was quite boring; a long drive along the first part of road where there was mainland on both sides.
On Thursday, we were back at the Corso shop and began by sorting out the books again, then moving onto the children's room, which stank. A child had had a poo. Everywhere.
After that lovely distraction, I spent most of my time helping with delivering, collecting and moving furniture. This was much more fun than books! In the afternoon, we went to the beach in Waitara, paddled, realised it was a bit too cold and came back to the house.
Friday was sorting out Fiona's woodshed- Jess managed to create some very nice piles and I managed to destroy their chopping block. In the afternoon we went to Dawson Falls in the Egmont National Park. On the way there we went to Eltham which has a little cheese shop. Very exciting and it now means we're carrying round several pieces of cheese we'll never eat! When we got to Dawson Falls, We decided to do the Wilkie's Pools Track which was really nice and meant we could keep our walking skills going on. We also saw the Dawson Falls. I grade it about 7/10. A very impressive height and very picturesque. The flow was also very good, but you can't get very close, which really hit the score.
On Saturday, we woke up to find the house/factory empty. We busied ourselves with 1.5 hours picking up dead flax then decided we might as well go do something. We went through New Plymouth to Paretutu Rock. We'd read and heard it's a really good view and quite a touristy thing to 'climb the rock'. It turns out you actually have to properly climb a section of the rock, with quite a sheer drop. I'm part monkey, so didn't have a problem, and Jess was
very brave and barely even registered it (Jess says: my legs did not stop shaking, even when we were in the car going home. I hate heights and it was IN NO WAY worth it). On the way back, we decided to stop and properly visit Puke Arika again which turned out to be great.
When we got home, Fiona and Cath had just got back too. Cath had been kayaking down the local river, and Fiona got stuck waiting for her! We cut more flax for the remainder of work time, then decided on something a bit different. We went to Stratford and watched the speedway
racing. It was brilliant, but the food was expensive (everyone else brought picnics) and it was really cold (everyone else brought blankets).
It was a really nice finish to our stay in Taranaki.
Next we're off to Manakau, just south of Levin. (although we're not, we're actually already in Wellington. But we haven't had any internet...)
Oh, one of the main highlights of staying here was that we saw our first Fazer! Enclosed is a picture Jess took in the petrol station (all above board, she asked permission!).