New Plymouth
- Jun 1
- 7 min read
May 20-27, 2026 we plan to stay in New Plymouth. New Plymouth is the major city of the Taranaki region on New Zealand's west coast and home to over 60,000 residents, it is famous for its striking contrast between the ocean and the perfectly symmetrical peak of Mount Taranaki. There is really not much to do there.
May 20, 2026 - Drive from Taupo to New Plymouth. This was a long drive because Route 3 was closed, forcing us to go via back roads, some of which were unpaved. We were glad to do this during the daylight and only losing 1 hub cap along the way. We later found out that this took us along the "Forgotten Highway". It went through Uruti which was where The Last Samarai was filmed. Mount Taranaki was supposed to be the fill in for Mt. Fuji. I don't plan to climb Mount Taranaki this trip, but have climbed Mt. Fuji. Maybe we'll climb Mount Taranaki when we come back to do the Tanganiro Alpine Pass.
One of the total trip highlights was learning about "fogbows" (albino rainbow). This is a real thing and happens when sun strikes fog. The fog water droplets are smaller than rain, so the prism effect doesn't happen and the rainbow stays white. Sometimes a bit of one of the prism colors comes through. You can see some blue in a couple of the photos (lower, inside part of the fogbow).
Along the way we stopped to see the Ruakuri limestone cave.
We heard the most amazing amount of birdsong here and I actually recorded (on Merlin):
Australian Magpie
Masked Lapwing
Eurasian Blackbird
Welcome Swallow
Song Thrush
Sacred Kingfisher (very pretty)
Silvereye
Fantail
Tui
Bellbird
This was actually interesting EXCEPT for our guide who had much too much coffee, hadn't realized there was an interactive audio tour and kept turning the lights off when I was still trying to navigate to the tour next stop.
The entrance to the cave was quite unique with a winding ramp down to the cave mouth. A piece of limestone was left strategically placed to catch dripping water at the bottom.
The cave had several interesting displays
which included glow worms, which are really glow maggots. Called worms because it sounds nicer than glow maggots. They manufacture strings to catch food.
During cave exploration and development, they drilled a hole down to aid in air circulation.
All of this area was under the sea and fossils can still be found
There were territorial issues through the last hundred years, or so and some evidence remains of the earlier private tour operators and their walkways.
Our next stop on the journey was to have a cruise "around" the glow worm caves. This was an ABSOLUTE rip-off. We got in a boat and the guide, via guide ropes, pulled us in a circle for about 15 minutes. The circle was around the same cave and each cycle took about 3 minutes. No photos because they weren't allowed in this section. The forest area around the boat was quite nice and that's where these were taken as we were leaving.
The next stop was the Kiwi House and this was the star of the day.
Here we were greeted by a Tui bird
saw many interesting birds including these red crowned parakeets and a very lonely and sad looking kea (no photos)
male and female sacred king fishers
a mallard with her brood, keeping all the ducks in a row
and kiwis which were running around their enclosure looking like golfers on speed. No photos because it was in a night environment and photos weren't allowed.
The road took us via Uruti which doesn't remind me of Japan at all (unfortunately, no photos).
We went through a tunnel which we later found out was called the hobbit tunnel because of how it was shaped.
Our AirBnB was a really nice bungalow
with a resident cat called Puss-Puss who was very nice.
We had an awful dinner at Cobb & Co. The only slightly interesting thing was the use of robot servers.
May 21 - After a few errands, we had a short hike up Paritutu Rock for the view. This wasn't long, but it was stairs and scrambling. Believe it or not, it was an enjoyable hike even though it was rated as hard with an elevation gain of 328 feet in .3 miles. Please be impressed by the photos. The route was stairs and scrambling. There were chains provided for the upper portion.
The views were quite good
and it was interesting to see the black sand beaches, reminding me again that we are in a volcanic area.
Today we made a quick trip to Egmont National Park, the home of Mount Taranaki. We got some advice for hiking during our stay. There were many choices.
This morning Chris found an amazing sourdough bakery. Breakfast was a croissant (8/10) and a cinnamon roll (8/10).
and they recommended the Black Sand Restaurant on the beach for great pizza.
That's where we ended up for dinner tonight and had an appe of brussel sprouts.
Here are some photos at the beach next to the restaurant.
And this was the end of our second day here.
May 22 - Hike up to see the reflection of Mt Taranaki in Pouakai Tarns tarn via Mangorei Track and Pouakai Hut.
The weather was beautiful. This was like climbing a never-ending stair master. Chris talked me into walking down after 1.8 miles so we didn't see anything and rested the remainder of the day. (photos are under May 24 when we tried again).
May 23 - Hike up to Pukeiti and through the rhododendron gardens. This was a shorter hike of about 5 miles with about 1300 feet elevation gain. The weather was amazing.
Alltrails got this track totally wrong and I was thankful I read the reviews.
We started at the beautiful Pukeiti Gardens. We were able to walk through the gardens to get to the trail head.
Much of what we walked through was the rain forest part of the gardens which looked good enough to remind me of the forests in Tasmania.
From there we entered the "un-maintained" sections of the hike up. This was very muddy, slippery and wet. We were walking over downed trees and through overgrown ferns. We were very glad to have our poles.
The view at the top of Pukeiti Peak wasn't a view at all because the trees had grown so tall.
On the walk back we took a detour to a "paint mine" which ended up being a rather short, but slippery track across a river to a very small, fenced off, quadrangle hole. Nothing to see and I got lost twice.
Continuing the walk back, we got soaked by foliage and ended up having to walk around a fence because the track was fenced off coming the other way. Alltrails had us coming back via a maintenance track which wasn't clear coming our direction. We were quite surprised the track was so muddy and foliage so wet, as there hadn't been rain for several days.
The rest of the hike was uneventful and Buni was very interested in this lizard.
We did get a good shot of Mt. Taranaki on the way home.
May 24 - Taranaki Farmers' market and back to try Mt. Taranaki again.
This must have been the smallest farmers' market we've been to. There might have been a dozen stalls, only 3 of which sold fruits and vegetables. I ended up getting a cinnamon and sugar crepe (7/10 and pretty darn good) and we bought some bread at the bread van (bread made by Blanche) which was also very tasty.
From there back to try the hike up to the hut and tarn up the side of Mt. Taranaki because I refuse to fail on a hike. This time I was successful, but the stairs were very annoying and rather boring. In the end, the hike was 8 miles and about 2480 feet elevation gain - all on wide gapped wooden slat stairs. Not sure why this was so challenging, given we'd had more elevation gain per mile in previous hikes.
The wide-gapped wooden slat walkway meant no poles. It was 4 miles of stairs up and 4 miles of stairs down, like some sort of sadistic stair master experience.
I did happen to see a stick insect along the way.
The hut was probably one of the nicest I've seen. Thankfully I brought extra clothes because my shirts were soaking wet.
The tarn was tiny and clouds came in. In the end, we decided not go down to the tarn which was a good decision because in the 10 minutes we stopped on the board walk to see the mountain, the clouds moved in and the tarn was invisible, as was the mountain. We won't be going back up to see the view again.
The way down was also boring and I had to be extra careful not to miss or trip on stairs as I became inattentive. 4 miles of walking up stairs and 4 miles of walking down stairs. I hope my knees foregive me in the morning.
What we actually saw
and what we should have seen (but closer).
At least this hike is now history.
May 25, 2026 - Manganui Gorge and Dawson Falls. Beautiful weather today and we gave my knees a break by doing two short hikes. Both of these feature in the "best things to do" in New Plymouth.
Manganui Gorge is famous for its alpine habitat and 100 meter suspension bridge. Besides being built to withstand 100 years of the alpine environment,
the bridge features illustrations of local stories and the phases of an avalanche.
The gorge itself is still geologically active and looked like it needed a huge waterfall. Instead it was just a "monster gully".
Next we drove around to see Dawson Falls. We could walk right down to the falls basin, which must be a lovely place to swim in the summer.
May 26, 2026 - Taranaki Thermal Spa.
Taranaki Thermal was originally Tarawhata Mineral Baths. The water originates from Mounga Taranaki and makes it down to their artisan well. The original well was created while looking for oil - they didn't find oil - but did find the mineral water spring. I spent the morning having a soak and a facial.
For our last evening we wanted to catch the iconic sunset effects over Taranaki. Typically the shot is taken of the mountain through this distinctive bridge which looks like a whale skeleton.
The beach view was also quite lovely.
Next we are off to Hamilton for a very short stay before continuing to Paihia.
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