We woke up on the morning of our fifth day hooning around the North Island at a Freedom Camping spot at the beginning of the Manawatu Gorge. It was still. It was peaceful. It was a tad chilly but we just enjoyed our surroundings. Our morning activity was to head to Palmerston North – a city neither Darryl nor I had truly visited before. The draw card here was the New Zealand Rugby Museum. We absolutely loved this place and think it is worth a visit, even if you’re not keen on the sport. We enjoyed some glorious spring sunshine as we wound our way up the western part of the island towards Whanganui, where we had a quick pit stop for lunch. One advantage of travelling in a campervan is that eating on the go is pretty easy. We found a picturesque spot beside a lake and made salad and chicken for lunch. No need to hurry as we had everything we needed with us (including a bathroom stop!)
We took the coastal drive up around Mt. Taranaki. I’d hoped that we may have been able to get to Parihaka but the marae was on tight lockdown due to COVID. Honestly, I’m not sure if you can even just rock up to a marae at any time. Darryl wasn’t aware of the peaceful resistance of Parihaka so I shared my recollection of events while driving and then corrected myself using the NZ Histories website and good old Wikipedia. I wasn’t too far off…
Last stop for the evening was New Plymouth. A huge draw card for me was the Len Lye exhibit. I’d studied Len Lye’s filmmaking eons ago at uni and it was great to see how these were made – such avante garde techniques! However, neither of us were fully prepared for the hypnotic beauty of his kinetic scultpures. Our fave was the Sky Snakes. We ended the night at Oakura Beach where we had another night of freedom camping.
Check out these two museums if you’re in the area.
New Zealand Rugby Museum: http://rugbymuseum.co.nz/
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery: https://govettbrewster.com/
The Peterson Odyssey 