Road Trip: Wanganui

    We spent the first night of our 4-day road trip in Wanganui at a great bed-and-breakfast place called Braemar House on Plymouth Street. I've stayed in a lot of B&Bs over the years and I have to say that none were as luxurious as this one. The house was built in the 1890s and is a classic Victorian building, kind of rambling in a charming way. It had fallen onto some hard times but starting in the 1990s it was restored into what is now a really beautiful place.
    Wanganui straddles the banks of the river of the same name and it is a haven for artists, especially those who work in glass. It's also pretty famous as a breeding ground for future rugby stars - a number of All Blacks players, both past and present, hail from there, in fact.
    We ate dinner at Angora, a Turkish-Mediterranean place in the heart of the city. Nice place, great food and an attentive staff. We followed that with a nice long walk through what is a very pretty small city.
    Breakfast the next morning was immense... when we arrived we were asked what we wanted for breakfast and Elena said "surprise us." What we got was a Kiwi-style English breakfast with way more food than I could finish. (Fortunately, Josep is still growing and, therefore, can consume mass quantities of calories on a daily basis without falling into a coma so none of it went to waste.)
    On the way out of town we stopped at a beach located at the mouth of the Wanganui River at the place where it empties into the Tasman Sea. The sand is black because the land was formed by volcanic eruptions and the beach is littered with driftwood that, according to locals, comes downstream when the river floods. It makes the whole beach pretty picturesque.
    Some time after leaving Wanganui we came to a large park with a great view of Mount Taranaki, the giant volcano that dominates the landscape for more than 50 miles in all directions. The volcano, according to folks at the Braemar House, shouldn't have snow because of the temperate climate in that part of the country and because it's so close to the sea, but it does. Apparently, there is some kind of temperature anomaly that keeps it snow covered year round. No matter what the reason, the snow helps to make the mountain - which Maori refer to as the "Father of the Land" - a pretty impressive sight even from a great distance.
    The park is also the home to Dawson's Falls. Elena, Josep and his cousin Elena wanted to see them and, somehow, convinced me that hiking through the woods was something I could do.
    I did it, but it took me a very long time on a pair of battered legs to make my way along the narrow footpaths, which included boulders and steep slopes that required me to be much more agile than I normally am these days. The falls were worth the trouble, though I wasn't so sure of that at the time.
    Back in the car, we set out for New Plymouth and a tiny "holiday cabin" that we hoped we'd all fit into without stepping on one another.
    We did, but that's a story for tomorrow...

The beach at Castlecliff just outside Wanganui.

This is a section of the path leading to Dawson's Falls... it only got worse from here...

It looks as though a child is playing near the water but it's only a piece of driftwood on Castlecliff Beach. Way in the background you can see Mount Taranaki from a distance of some 60 miles.

Braemar House in Wanganui. Great place to stay. You can check it out at www.braemarhouse.co.nz

Wanganui is an art hub and these giant pencils are one example of the sculptures you can find all around the city.

Dawson's Falls. This was as close as I could get. Josep and his cousin Elena went down to the base but that was more than I could handle.

Mount Taranaki from a distance of about 20 miles... it's so immense that this shot is of only half the mountain. The rest is covered in clouds.