On Saturday, Nov 7th, we got up to a beautiful morning - cool, calm, some morning fog to burn off and the town of Rowene looking very pleasant. We walked around the town for awhile, took a boardwalk through a mangrove swamp and checked out the local Saturday market. This a very attractive looking area with nice green hills and valleys. A sky full of blue also helped.
We followed Rte 12 south through the twin towns of Opononi and Omapere and on to an exceptionally twisty road through the Waipoua Forest, home to some very large Kauri trees. These trees aren't all that tall, by BC standards, but they sure are thick. The old one we saw, listed as being about 2000 years of age, was about 13 meters in circumference, pretty much from base to the top where the branches started sprouting out. Not sure how the average chainsaw would handle one of these.
The town of Dargaville was a good find because Catherine noticed an i-Centre as we rolled into town and decided to find out where Internet might be available. It just happened that the operator of the i-Centre was just getting the wireless set up and her tech guy had just walked in the door. We had a lunch and by then everything was ready. The wireless was fast and nearly free. The attached shop sold various wood products, and although very nice, they were pretty much out of our price range.
We continued on down the coast, ending up just past Helensville at Shelly Beach where we found a campground - no potable water at this one either. Pretty cheap, though, as campgrounds go (NZ$20).
We picked a Sunday morning to go back through Auckland. The North Island is quite narrow at this point and you must go through the city, or at least part of it, to get anyfurther south. We took the opportunity to drop by the rental agency to extend our vana rental by 3 days. We'll now be dropping it off just a few hours before our flight home leaves Auckland.
South of Auckland by about 90 minutes is the city of Hamilton. One of its notable attractions is the Botanical Gardens. We had a nice, sunny, warm few hours to wander around the gardens and took lots of pictures. Some plants were familiar but many were not. Where there were plant labels, we often did not even recognize the plant families listed.
The night of the start of our second week in NZ was spent in Cambridge, a short drive from Hamilton and another place (of only a very few we've seen so far) with a pronouncable name. Our weather continues to be quite nice although somewhat cool at times. We haven't had any truly miserable weather yet. It's been fairly windy, but to people who have lived on the prairies, nothing too unusual. We seem to get some sun and some heat, each day. Generally the cool weather has made for quite pleasant traveling.
Monday, Nov 9th - from Cambridge to Rotorua, which seems to have a reputation as being kind of New Zealand's answer to Yellowstone in the USA. Personally, I didn't see much here to interest me. We walked around but all I saw were a few steam vents, some bubbling mud pools and some hot water ponds. It's a town of about 75,000 people and it was probably as interesting walking up and down the streets as anything else. I would have been happy to spend less time there.
Since we were already over on the east coast, almost, we decided to travel out around the East Cape, from the Bay of Plenty around the coast to the east and then south to Gisborne and then Napier and Hastings. We've read that this area is very quiet, very scenic and not so touristy as some areas (like Rotorua?). Sounds like an area we'd like. We found a quiet motorhome camp near the small village of Opape. It didn't give the appearance of being very nice (quite a few old trailers and old vehicles around), but it's clean, very quiet and we are the only people staying here tonight. We're also about 100 feet from another of New Zealand's extensive beaches.
Tuesday, Nov 10th - spent the day traveling the East Coast highway, heading more easterly in NZ. Around lunch time, we arrived at East Cape which is the most easterly point in New Zealand. Sunrise arrives here each day before anywhere else in the world. There was a short hike up to a lighthouse with a nice view of the Pacific and an offshore island where the lighthouse was in years past. Stayed at a campground near Tolaga Bay, site of NZ's longest wharf, even if it is slowly falling apart!
Spent Nov 11th driving to Gisborne and then on to Napier. The drive south was exceptionally tortuous, windy and rough. NZ is a hilly place, but their roads do seem to wind around and up and over everything in the way. Makes for slow and tiring travel. Captain James Cook landed in these areas back in the 1700s and there are numerous memorials and the like. Napier has a good collection of Art Deco buildings so we did a short walk around the downtown to see some of these. This was done during a series of intermittent showers and wind. About the only unpleasant weather we've had so far. Tomorrow we're off to Wellington. It will be interesting to see how long this this drive takes. It's only about 350 km....
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