03/08/2018 - Hunting on Mount Taranaki

In "Stratford", a patience game of a special kind began. - As soon as you leave the town, a clear view of "Mount Taranaki" - a volcano straight out of a picture book - opens up under the best weather conditions. But to catch one of these few moments, patience, endurance, and luck are required.

A Maori legend says that Mt Taranaki was expelled from the center of the North Island. When he was caught in a love affair with the beautiful "Mt Piranga", her lover ("Mt Tongariro") was furious. Out of shame or to maintain peace, Mt Taranaki settled on the west coast. In doing so, he created a deep scar in the land, which is now the "Whanganui River". Since then, he has stood in majestic solitude, often hiding his face behind clouds to hide his tears.

In the past few days, we kept our eyes open and hoped for small gaps between the wide cloud fronts. Right after breakfast, we hit the road. But most of the time, only the lower half of the 2,518m high volcano was visible. So we hid in the library to continue working on the blog. In addition, we devoted our thoughts to the sale of the car.
Back at the campsite, we treated ourselves to more elaborate meals and had longer conversations with other backpackers.

Today we visited the local i-Site to get information about hikes in the area. She also gave us the weather forecast for the coming days, which looked promising, and a tip! Several websites offer the opportunity to spy on Mt Taranaki via video cameras. We found that despite the many clouds, the summit was occasionally visible. From below, it seemed to be completely covered - but the view from above offered a clear view of the snow-covered peak. We liked this way of observation, so we called up the live images several times a day from now on. Because the weather conditions can change quickly up there.
We used the currently limited hours of sunshine to take a closer look at Stratford. The town is relatively compact and, to be honest, has little to offer besides Mt Taranaki. But in the center of the city, there is a black and white bell tower. It plays a short carillon several times a day. We positioned ourselves on the opposite side of the street promptly at 3:00 p.m. The speakers began to boom, and individual figures appeared between the windows. With great anticipation, we listened to and watched the performance. - In reference to the British town of "Stratford-upon-Avon", the birthplace of William Shakespeare, "The Glockenspiel" presented the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. - Even if we couldn't understand much of the narrative - the tower was located right on the busy highway - a happy ending between the two was clearly visible.
In the afternoon, we retreated to the campground kitchen and baked a chocolate-mango brownie - soul food against the persistent rain, so to speak. ;) For dinner, we had cheesy wraps and microwave popcorn as a movie snack. - Finding the right flavor in New Zealand proves to be more difficult than expected. We can take the search for sweet popcorn off anyone's desperate list at this point: there isn't any! Apart from salty and buttery, the sweet + salty version is the only one that comes close to the sweet popcorn from Germany. In the end, the option was not as bad as expected and tasted quite good.

Will the changeable weather end tomorrow? And will the volcano, which last erupted in 1755 and is overdue, finally be visible? We will see.