You might remember a few weeks back that Nay and I climbed a range of three volcanoes, well the largest of these was Mt. Ruapehu. After the alleged mountain affair Taranaki was banished and forced to move out to New Plymouth and leave the other three in peace to reign supreme and pimp out all the other mini mountains in the national park.
Mt. Taranaki is in fact so sneaky that we couldn’t even see him, which is hard to believe I know because apparently the town of New Plymouth lives in its shadow....The main reason for this? You guessed it - Rain. We were there the best part of two days and there was so much cloud cover we couldn't see it from anywhere, let alone climb it as we had intended to. So we're saving that for when Jed and Annah come over for Xmas. It'll be on our route when we tour the north again so hopefully they will pack some sunshine so we can have a go at making it up.
All was not lost though. We spotted a very tall rock at the end of the harbour from our campsite called Mt. Paritutu. The climb up is challenging, a real adrenaline pumper - and coming down ain't much better. It’s not particularly high as it takes just 30 minutes to climb to the top, but it’s practically a vertical climb after the first few sets of steps. I honestly couldn't believe that people were allowed to just have a go. To be fair some safety precautions had been taken as a chain had been bolted into the cliff to help pull yourself up...but that’s it. One trip or slip and boom - Nay and Dean pancakes for breakfast.
Just googled it and found this story to give you a flavour of the danger http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/7439656/No-sign-of-trio-lost-at-sea-off-New-Plymouth
Views from the top are awesome, and as always, well worth it.
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