August 25-26 in Palmerston North, in the Manawatu

The drive to Palmerston North, our next destination, had me a little worried. Earlier in the week, the news had reported “the desert road” (our planned route) was closed due to snowfall and ice. However, the roads had been cleared and we had no problems at all. The views of the mountains and the volcanic plains with all of the snow were really quite spectacular.

Tongariro is one of my favourite places in New Zealand. Seeing it again was uplifting and reminded me of some of the reasons I had come to NZ. I will be back in the Summer to hike (er...tramp) there, if at all possible.

Palmerston North is a town of about 90,000 which is situated in the heart of the Manawatu region of New Zealand’s north island. It’s a thriving university town, with a hint of rural provincial lifestyle at the edges. We spent 3 days there, and Stacey even managed to see a couple of movies. Interestingly, it turned out that the New Zealand film festival was touring the country and just happened to be in P.N. The movie theatre was small, but extremely well-run.

From Palmerston North, we headed to the west coast, via a little side route that took us through a rolling hillside of massive wind turbines. These monsters were 70 metres tall, each blade was 35 metres long, and each unit generated 90 megawatts. Apparently, this wind farm of 55 turbines supplies power to 32,000+ homes. It’s a great example of a success story where renewable energy is concerned. It was easy to see why they put them in that location, too—it was extremely windy up in those hills. Appropriately, the local rubgy team is called the Manawatu Turbines.