So today the plan was to go to the visitor centre at the south end of Mt Egmont walk to the waterfall and on route get fantastic views of Mt Egmont which is a perfectly formed volcanic cone, but just for a change Mother Nature had a different plan. As we were driving out we had quite a good view of the volcano so when we could we pulled over but by this time the cloud had come over and we couldn’t see the top so we carried on round to the visitor centre. We took the Konini loop walk which unfortunately was a bit muddy after all the rain we have had, but we continued none the less and eventually got to Dawson falls waterfall, this is a waterfall with a 30 metre drop and was running very quickly. After looking at the waterfall for a while we set off back up to the visitor centre to get the car and see if we could get a better view of Mount Egmont. Our next stop was Taranaki pioneer village, which is a collection of houses that have been moved together to form a village, it was really interesting but a little strange as there were papier-mâché dolls in some of the building which were actually quite creepy but the houses and businesses they had were interesting, although at one point I thought Chris was trying to adopt a flock of chickens as they kept following him. We stopped for a coffee and something to eat then set off back to New Plymouth, on the way we decided to have one last go at seeing if we could see the top of the volcano so went to another vantage point and although the clouds cleared a little so we could see a lot more than we had we still didn’t quite see the top, we will keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow. We came back into town and dropped the car back at the hotel then did a walk round the town looking at the old buildings. Finally it was time to get something to eat then back to the hotel to relax before our long drive tomorrow.
