Day 19 - 21: With rain to New Plymouth

26.02.18 - 01.03.18: Lake Ngaroto - Mokau - New Plymouth - Patea - Tauramunui

The next morning we headed towards Mokau. It's time to charge, wash, etc. There's not much else to do in the rain. Unfortunately, there is a lot of rain near Mt. Taranaki. It probably won't get better. The campground in Mokau was really bad. The sanitary facilities have not been maintained for about 70 years and have the exact same architectural style. You can imagine that we didn't get to do any laundry. Apart from the fact that there was no dryer (essential in the rain), the sink was already half petrified. Sandra opened the rusty freezer to check if there were no body parts ;o). Now we were glad that we had enough clothes for a week.

But we didn't skimp on the food and made Spätzli with steak and peas. The relatively good merlot complemented everything and lifted the 'rain mood'. We didn't expect much more in New Plymouth and aimed for shopping and indoor stuff. The district is cool, it has several free parking lots by the sea and right in the city. In the city, everything was somehow geared towards America: flags, pennants, and instead of an NZ flag we only found their US version... wtf? Well, Sandra located a cool bar called crowded Pub and we first went to the free campground (usually has few spots: first come, first served) and then went bowling, including a UV light version of mini golf. Expensive bowling has a new name: $12 per person per game or $19 for two games.

PS: Much later, a lady at an i-site explained to us that the end of February was Americana, a festival with hundreds of American vintage cars.

https://www.americarna.com/

Okay, soaked from the rain, we went back to the city for dinner around eight o'clock. Crowded Pub = burger, steak with beer, what else. In the bathroom, you could still watch the rugby openings. You can't miss anything: I counted a whopping 17! TVs and a projector.

The next morning, the weather decided what we would do next. Weather forecasts for NZ are overrated. Lo and behold, cloudy with sun. So off we went towards Mt. Taranaki. Since the weather was unstable, we decided on a short walk to the Wilkies Pool Loop Track. It's a wheelchair-accessible highway up the mountain.