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After the excitement of our underground adventure we embarked upon a huge drive day. When I say we, I mean Dan; I slept mostly. We drove south past Auckland, again, and then went west to Taranaki National Park. The drive itself was a slow one as the scenery was unimiaginable and not one hour passed without one or two stops for photos and admiration. The sun was out and shone down, most days, until or after 10pm. We camped at the edge of Taranaki National Park and spent the evening sat on a hill studying every mile of the park. We thought we were unfortunate to be so near to some groundworks and building work. But, the labourers were a friendly bunch who came over for a chat and point out exactly what we were looking at, almost down to the tree! They had been assigned a project which entailed laying a road which would stretch across the east side of one of the larger lakes and work had begun less than a month ago. The Maori tribe who lived just by the lake, however, were particularly worried. They informed the government that the lake was home to an enormous ancient monster; a traditional Maori tale stemming from over 1000 years ago, and they were certain the monster would rise again if the building work disturbed his slumber. The local council, apparently without hesitation, immediately stopped all work and ordered the work to begin again a mile away from the lake! The Maori tribe were especially grateful and according to our workmen friends, had celebrated for many days. After the media caught wind of the story, this tale became a famous and proud one.
In the morning we we took ourselves into the centre of the National Park to visit Mt. Taranaki (Mt. Egmont). Mt. Taranaki is worshipped and seen as a god by the Maori people of New Zealand and standing just yards away from the foot of this giant mountain, it's not hard to see why. Not forgetting that in ancient times these people would have only seen and known about the natural life around them, this belief seems easier to comprehend than the idea of Christianity, for example. The faith, passion and innocence of the Maori is contagious. Mt. Tarankai is, by far, my favourite mountain and I was in complete awe of it and, some of the wonders of the modern world are completely dwarfed by it's beauty.
Finally, after prying ourselves away from Mt. Taranaki we headed to Palmerstin North, a city to the South of Taranaki National Park. We spent hours looking for a campsite that clearly wasn't there so went further south to a little town called Norsewood and slept here, on the side of a road. In the morning we drove east to Taumatawhak- atangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, the longest place name in the world. The name itself tells a complete story of one of the first Maori tribes of New Zealand and has remained unchanged until this day.
The next day we drove as far south as we could go into good old Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. With a little time to spare we took a long walk through the city, washed all of our clothes and sat in a car park for 5 hours waiting for the Picton ferry to take us over to the South Island. Eventually, at 9pm the we boarded the ferry and slept the 3 hours it took to cross the water. We were, once again, almost too tired to move when we arrived in Picton on the South Island, so we slept in the nearest picnic area until morning.
Thought of the Day: Some days you're a bug. Some days you're the windshield!
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