The East Cape and around

Much to the surprise of Jayne and her housemates (who were convinced we were never actually going to leave Taupo) we finally hit the road on Saturday, 3^rd November with the plan of going up the east coast as far as Auckland before going back to Taupo for Jayne’s goodbye party the following Saturday. We headed first over to Napier, where we stocked up on some food supplies before driving on to through Wairoa to Gisbourne, where we booked into a campsite (at a showground in the middle of a dressage competition) and spent our first night in the van!

We woke up, pretty well rested, the next morning to find that it was raining and cold! Undeterred, we set off up the coast and happened upon a surf comp just outside Gisbourne. We watched the final and decided that kayak surfing is much better (you can do a lot more moves on the waves in a kayak) though apparently, a surf-ski is the best!

We carried on up the coast almost as far as Hick’s Bay that day, but took a detour to the East Cape to see the Most Easterly Lighthouse in the World on the way. It’s 21km down a narrow road, which is mainly not tarred and goes right by the sea most of the time. We walked up the steep hillside to see the lighthouse and were nearly blown over by the wind! But it was definitely worth the trip.

The next morning, we woke up to find that the power to our campsite had gone overnight, which didn’t surprise us at all given the stormy conditions. We drove on along the coast as far as Whakatane, amazed at the angry sea alongside us. We stopped to take photos at the beach in Hawai where the shelf was so sharp the waves were literally crashing straight down on the beach with a great bang sending spray high into the air.

On Monday morning, we took a tour ferry over to White Island, a live volcano! It was quite exciting wandering around the island with great clouds of steam coming up from some areas. It wasn’t too dangerous though, in the past they’ve had people living there mining the sulphur, until each group got wiped out by explosions that is… Thankfully the ferry trip home was considerably smoother than the trip out when sick bags were in great demand, luckily not by either of us though.

That evening we headed to Tauranga and stopped at Kiwi 360^o on the way. The next morning we walked up Mount Manganui, accidentally taking the steep route up! After deciding that was enough exercise for the day we travelled on towards Waihi. We found a campsite with hot pools at Athenree so decided that would be a great place to stay the night. After over an hour in the hot pool we finally got hungry enough to take our wrinkled hands out and go cook dinner!

We took a look at the open Goldmine in Waihi on Thursday morning before heading on to Auckland. On the way we stopped to have a cup of tea in the World Famous in New Zealand Café in Paeroa known for the L&P (Lemon & Paeroa) World Famous in New Zealand drinks – we had English Breakfast tea though…

Back in Auckland again, we were just in time to play polo with the club again. On Friday we drove out to Dave’s factory where they make Bermuda sea kayaks, to have a look. Then, on Saturday morning, we headed back to Taupo again, under strict orders to go to Jayne’s going away party that night!