Still without clarity... Rain and mist without end! - Taranaki NP

Great, it rained all night. And it was windy too. The rain was pounding on our wooden house. One might typically view this as romantic, but for us, it was anything but that...

Without ever leaving the room, we pack our suitcase again and say goodbye. The last look from the room, to capture a photo as proof of the rain, shows me a group of about 8 people in full rain gear hiking in the area. What must you be thinking to set out in sideways rain and foggy clouds to see something? There's really nothing to see???

So we are off.

Our next destination is Taranaki in Egmont National Park on the west coast of the North Island. Another volcano. We're not very optimistic that we'll get to see it, but hope dies last, even for us.

The drive of nearly 200 km is difficult in the sense that it is ONLY raining and visibility is no more than 200 meters. There isn't much to see in the surroundings, primarily mist...

We struggle through and reach our accommodation, the Stratford Mountain House, at 2 PM. It continues to rain heavily and we find refuge in the dry room. We now hope for the late afternoon... After 5 PM, the rain is supposed to stop and visibility should improve... with a lot of luck we might be able to step outside again.

...

By now it’s half past five and the weather hasn’t improved. We should have taken the direct route from Tongariro NP back to Auckland and skipped the detour to Taranaki. We're driving just to wait at the accommodation for the next day, which, hopefully, will bring better weather. We're driving to wait...

Even though we are so close to the volcano, there's nothing to see, not even the base is visible... Frustrating :-(

Tomorrow we need to be back in Auckland. That’s a five-hour drive. We could have shortened it by canceling this accommodation yesterday and booking a new one on the way to Auckland... but hindsight is always 20/20...

Even if tomorrow morning's weather should improve, we won’t have the time for a hike... kind of a drag and our motivation is pretty low.