It was a gorgeous weekend of sun, gentle breezes and peaceful sleep (pull the udder one!)

Today (tuesday) is a wet, cold, damp day. The kind of cold and damp that gets into your bones and lingers no matter how much porridge you have or how many cups of tea. When you add that to the wind which ensures the cold and damp reaches every conceivable part of you, you get a pretty miserable day. A day when, in all honesty, it may be preferrable to stay at work rather than face the outdoors and the cold draughty house which awaits (plus the ever present couple of flies that always appear just as you're about to cook or go to sleep and must operate on a shift pattern to have been around this long). Anyhoo, that is today for you. The weekend was a slightly different story.

Friday was a beautiful day, the perfect day to begin an adventure. We set off from work at 4 on the dot with backpacks (and keyboard) in tow, up the hill to Sue's car and headed off into the sunset.....for about twenty minutes before we got stuck in a traffic jam for the next three quarters of an hour. There was no good reason for the hold up - apparently it's due to traffic lights but there was no queue at the traffic lights so I don't understand. After this little glitch though things smoothed out and we headed up Highway 1 then 3, stopped in Bulls for a subway, carried on up to Stratford where we dropped our passenger Steve off, and then finally arrived in Oakura at about 10pm. It was a beautiful cloudless night (and I managed to find the Southern Cross all by myself, after instruction) but this also meant it was freezing. Thus I ended up with leggings, jogging pants, a vest and fleece, scarf and woolly hat on in bed just to be able to sleep.

Saturday morning was supposed to be the best weather of the weekend and the sun was certainly shining when we got up but after waiting to change cabins when we finally got up on the mountain it was cloudy and damp. Still, off we went on a 2 hour loop track up, up, up and then down down down, with a few ups thrown in for good measure. This is me at the start of the track by a monument to someone who had given their own life to save someone elses.

And here is what I like to call the kung fu koala formed by some oddly shaped tree branches

Next we have a shot from the peak of our walk where we stopped for a little snack. As you can see there wasn't much of a view due to the low cloud

This is a shot taken on the way down looking back up from whence we came

And a typical Haworth-esque bridge shot taken a little earlier

The final shot of Saturday comes from the car park as when we returned we could see across to the central plateau and a snow covered Ruahpehu

On the way back to the cabin we picked up some food for tea and then settled in for the night.

The wind and rain started about 9pm and carried on throughout the night and all of the next day. We did take a drive out on the Sunday including stops at the crafty fox (featured in a previous post), a slide - which I once again flew off the end of,

a beach just north of New Plymouth where some crazy folks were kite surfing and one dog was keeping an eye on his dad

and a glass of wine at Waiau Winery where they don't grow the grapes they just make the wine. It was alright but nothing to write home about. There was talk of driving the forgotten highway which looks amazing but that didn't happen so I look forward to doing it some other time, perhaps when Caz or Sal are here. We got fish and chips for tea on Sunday and then huddled inside once more. It did stop raining eventually and so it wasn't as noisy on Sunday night but I have to say i felt pretty wiped out on Monday and the thought of coming back to planes taking off and landing hardly made me feel certain of a good nights sleep for a while. Things are on the move though.

So Monday morning saw us depart Oakura and head into New Plymouth where we had an impromptu walk along a gorgeous beach to the Sugar Loaf islands. Unbeknownst to us there had been road closures on the sunday due to flooding so we didn't want to venture too far afield. Here are some pics from the beach.

We then had a final walk in Taranaki along the New Plymouth coastal walkway

And then wove our way back to Stratford to pick up Steve at his house, made a necessary stop at the big cow

And had a good drive back down in the sun (until we hit Wellington when it started to pur down, oh and of course it had gotten dark by this point). The End.