Sunday, April 09, 2006
West Coast
We had only allowed ourselves a couple of days to travel down the west coast, but given the poor weather this wasn’t to much of a problem. We missed out the caves at Waitomo, because there seem to be glow worm caves everywhere we go! We did stop in at ‘The Shearing Shed’ though, which was (surprisingly) nothing to do with sheep but in fact all about Angora rabbits. These are BIG rabbits. The rabbits are shorn every 3 months, and apparently each animal produces enough wool for a jumper each time! We happened to turn up in time to see a shearing demonstration, and the medieval looking device you can see in the photos is apparently for the rabbit’s safety and causes no injury or distress (they certainly didn’t seem bothered by it). We continued south to New Plymouth, which seems to have about as much outstanding architecture as the city centre of ‘old’ Plymouth. One thing it does have though is the Wind Wand. Fodor’s describes this as “a sculpture as iconic to New Plymouth residents as the Statue of Liberty is to New Yorkers”. Not quite, but it is impressive, in fact it’s probably the most impressive example anywhere of a 150ft high red lamp post that sways about in the wind!
![[Valid RSS]](http://roundtheworld.mm.st/img/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}