New Plymouth

After a relatively short drive from Wanganui we arrived at the hotel in Opunake. I'd already booked the hotel before Catherine mentioned to me that a few weeks a hostage had taken place at the hotel, and the hostage taker was shot and killed by police, but we are so glad that we didn't let that put us off staying. The hotel room was fantastic, apart from the heat pump, and the food was supurb. We had fish and chips at the so called best fish and chips shop in NZ, but neither of us was that impressed with them, and after having breakfast at the hotel the followng morning, we wished we had had dinner there too. After breakfast we had a walk to the beach and then drove the short distance to New Plymouth. We walked around the Pukekura park, visited the New Plymouth museum at the i-site. After our tour of New Plymouth, we drove over to the Eco Inn in Egmont Village. The Eco Inn was a completely self sufficient back packers and generated their own electricity. We had the whole place to ourselves, and treated it like our own private bach with awesome views of Mt Taranaki.