Palmerston North Part 2

We spent another few days visiting our friends Penny and Spencer in Palmerston North. We again booked an AirBnB close to their place, and while we knew from the listing is was on the small size, we weren’t prepared for how small. It was set up well for one person, but with 2 of us, a bit tight! Even by our standards of living on a sailboat for a lot of years, this place was cramped. Cathy wasn’t there during the day, and it encouraged me to get out as well. Did a couple of nice, slow runs along the river, and fixed a couple of things around the house for Penny and Spencer. I did find the lookout over the city and, as it’s quite flat, you get some great views!

We had pretty nice weather while we were there with rain only moving in Friday night. It was supposed to clear by morning, when we left to head to New Plymouth. It didn’t.

We had a nice drive west to the coast along the Surf Highway (for the last bit anyways). The weather cleared once we we got past Whanganui and by the time we stopped for a lunch break, it was beautiful. We had some leftover homemade pizza (thanks Penny), and found a small park in Hawera to sit and watch the ducks.

As we got closer to New Plymouth, we started to see the slopes of Mount Taranaki. The further we travelled, the more the cloud lifted, and finally, the last wisps cleared the peak and we were rewarded with a wonderful view of the mountain. We pulled off onto a side road, and when I got out of the car to take a few photos, the cows in the paddock across the road all came over to the fence to stare at the strange man looking at their mountain!

Our AirBnB in New Plymouth, home for the next 4 nights, is quite comfortable with a nice sun room out front, great for writing blog posts. A few days exploring around here, then off further north on Wednesday.