Palmy rocks! (and wordpress sucks)

It’s a bit hard to top the post-Zealandia emotional high that I get from seeing so many birds, especially parrots. Because we have the same mindset – destroy what destroys you. 🙂 Anyway, we were headed to Palmerston North that day, a town that we’ve never visited before. Our loss for sure since it’s super nice, a bit of a hidden gem, not on the usual tourist routes. So good onions 😉 for us finally visiting this beautiful spot. 🙂 We will definitely be back, 3 days weren’t enough.

We took the lazy, coastal route with a stopover at Raumati Beach. Nice spot. There was a supposedly „French“ patisserie … and labeling your patisserie „French“ is certainly good for marketing in English speaking countries and the reviews they had definitely showed that these efforts were successful. But it didn’t live up to the hype, plain average. Not bad, but too sweet and texture was also not optimal. Wouldn’t survive in France. *rofl* But good enough for nice break in the shade under trees.

In Palmy, we’d rented a house, relatively close to the centre, which did not disappoint. Super spacious, very clean, comfortable, and affordable.

Manawatu Gorge

The main tourism drawcard for the region is the Manawatu Gorge, and rightfully so. The gorge has a microclimate which protects it from the harsher extremes, especially the cold. Plus they have been running pest control for years now, so you get lots of birds plus beautiful plants in the forest. And then there were a couple of landslides and in 2017 they’d managed to close SH3 for good – the road was rebuilt following another route and now the gorge is quiet and peaceful. We need more landslides to bury our stupid autobahns here, please.

The Manawatu Gorge track is not a real circuit, but if you do it as a return walk, you can add a little loop (Te Awa Tracck) at the beginning or end – it’s worth it. For sure one of the nicest day walks we’ve done. Dense forest, great views, and lots of birds. The track itself is easy, so you can actually focus on nature and don’t have to watch your step all the way.

https://link.locusmap.app/r/syetoo

Palmy Esplanade and more

But there’s more to Palmy than the gorgeous Gorge! The city itself is situated along the river, there’s the Manawatu River Shared Pathway, the Victoria Esplanade, a beautiful strip of park, gardens, cycleways, promenade along it, car-free. Alexandre Patisserie does delicious cakes and tarteletts. There’s a good Farmers‘ market on the weekend plus great local stores and shops in the city and the surrounding settlements, like „The Farm Box“ (on 77 Cambridge Ave). And, last but not least, the world-renowned Dugald MacKenzie Rose Garden. Beautiful! We were probably 2-3 weeks too late to catch the full splendour, but there were still enough roses doing their very best to shine.

There’s more to Palmy, but apparently WordPress has a limit of how many photos or paragraphs you can put into a post? So I had to split it in two parts … . :-/