The start of the day was slow, due to rain and grey skies (cleared up though). We had a nice breakfast of dark round rye bread, chicken pate with pesto, cream cheese and Tim Tams (our favourite Aussie cookie).

We drove along the Tasman Sea Coast and landed at Cape Egmont. This is in the near of Mt. Taranaki (a volcanic mountain, which we will be hiking tomorrow). Mt. Egmont is the name white people gave for Mt. Taranaki. At Cape Egmont, there is a lighthouse and a rocky beach with black lava rocks. We enjoyed this spot to catch some sun, relax and look out into the sea. Thoughts of Australia on the other side kept coming into my mind or as the Aussies and Kiwis say it “going over the ditch”.

We liked this spot so much we decided to stay at Cape Egmont for the night. We did some “free camping” just up on a grassy spot above the rocky beach. It was a lovely evening and an amazing night. This has got to be our number one camping spot, overlooking the sea and Mt. Taranaki. For dinner, we had ravioli with tomato sauce, salad with lettuce, tomato, olive and onion. We watched the tide come back in, it was so dramatic with the full moon. It seems like one can mark the tides progression better on a rocky beach over a sandy one, with the water flooding over into coves and tidal pools. We saw the sunset melt into the water and by night we saw Taranaki lit up by the moon and saw hedgehogs at the side of the road. What lovely creatures. What a magical place, Cape Egmont.

Free Camping: View Map

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 am and is filed under Nature, Free Camping, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.