Tauranga

We cleaned the bach, packed our bags and hit the road early, to drive down to Rotorua via Tauranga. We wanted to call in to visit some friends of Sacha’s who’d emigrated to New Zealand last year. We stopped along the way at Matamata for coffee, then took a longer break at Karangahake Gorge, an old 19th century gold mining site which now has interesting walkways through the old mine works and up the river. Part of the walkway is through tunnels drilled into the rock, for which a torch is advisable. We didn't have a torch, and it was pitch black inside - you literally had to feel your way with arms outstretched to feel the sides of the tunnel before you got round a bend from which daylight was visible. 

Phew! Daylight!

We spent a couple of hours at the gorge, which also had several bridges of a suspension type which were a bit wobbly - the sign said maximum 10 people.

We stayed for lunch at the café before setting off for Tauranga and arrived at mid-afternoon. We’d thought that we’d be able to find the street where Sacha's friends lived quite easily, but had been hampered by the fact that there was no wifi at the bach, and so had been unable to look it up on the internet. You don’t realise how much you take it for granted these days, until you haven’t got it! Tauranga is New Zealand’s 6th  largest city, and also its fastest growing. Fortunately, we were able to follow road signs to an i-site, and get a map from there. It turned out that it was really easy to get to, and if we’d just carried on driving we’d have found it by blind luck.

We drove down to the wharf to the fresh fish market, and ordered fish & chips from the eatery there. They serve fish of the day, freshly caught, with chips on trays – none of you fancy-schmancy “plates” and “cutlery”! It wins awards every year as "best fish'n'chips" in the Bay Of Plenty. Lucinda had thoughtfully brought cutlery for all of us, as well as some cold Speight’s, tartare and tomato sauces, and vinegar. We sat outside on the dockside, our every move watched by a large flock of seagulls, who doubtless make a living by snatching food from the unwary and inattentive.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the beach towards Mount Maunganui, where a surf boat race was in progress; 

Mount Maunganui

and then had to take our leave as we wanted to get to Rotorua before night fell, in order to get into our next bach. The instructions for getting the key were somewhat convoluted, and we didn’t really want to be trying to find it in the dark! We found it with no trouble, and unpacked ourselves, nipped out for some necessary groceries from the local garage shop, before having an early night: we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

Coromandel

We were up at sparrow’s fart, as they say here, to get to Wellington airport by 0720, in order to catch our 0820 flight to Auckland. We landed early, picked up our rental car (a RAV4, to fit 5 people in), and set off for Tairua along State Highway 25. We stopped on the way for some breakfast at the Pukeko’s Nest café, then drove up to find our bach. And when we arrived, what a strange sight greeted our eyes! The bach is named Morocco, and this is clearly something that the owners are quite keen on. The furnishings are quite eclectic, with drapes, tapestries and cloths hanging all round the place, over doors and windows. The house appears to have been built around an antique Middle-Eastern doorway of dubious provenance (the importation of wood into New Zealand being strictly controlled by the Biosecurity Police). The living arrangements are quite open-plan, which means a bit of planning is required for getting up, going to bed and showering whilst preserving everyone’s modesty.

There is also a bizarre breakfast bar-cum-sink and top unit made of stainless steel. The house is clearly lived in for part of the year, with the owners’ stuff packed away in drawers, cupboards and wardrobes. We arranged ourselves as best we could through the upstairs and downstairs areas – I’d call them bedrooms but that would be too limiting a description. We explored the grounds, which include a creek (for which a dinghy and kayak were supplied) and a back garden across the bridge which included a vegetable garden, from which we were exhorted to help ourselves. We lunched in a café in Tairua, then explored the town, including the i-site where we booked ourselves onto the Cathedral Cove trip; and went for a walk and exploration along the beach, as well as stocking up on supplies from the local Four Square.

In the evening we walked back into the thriving metropolis, there to dine at a restaurant that had caught our eye earlier, Gauguin’s Shells. We arrived and ordered, and had a bit of a discussion about the steak I’d ordered:

“The steak takes 40 minutes”

“Why? It does’t take 40 minutes to cook a steak?”

“The chef’s French…that’s how he does it”

“OK, but please don’t keep everyone else waiting – can you bring their meals out when they’re ready?”

So we ordered some wine, and chatted amongst ourselves for a while. The while grew longer and longer, and nothing was appearing from the kitchen, so we got up to ask. At this point the maitre d’ goes into the kitchen, and emerges looking very flustered.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news” he told us.

“What’s the bad news?”

“The waitress forgot to pass your order into the kitchen. It’s only just been handed to the chef.”

“So what’s the good news?”

“I can offer you 50% off the cost of your dinner, and bring you some starters and bread on the house while you wait.”

Well, by this stage, it was late, we were very hungry and also somewhat annoyed. So we got up to leave. At this point he said he would like us to come back tomorrow night, and he would still offer us 50% off the cost of main courses.

We walked home, and ate a dinner of buttered toast and crumpets, with honey and fig & ginger jam raided from the larder at the bach.

Castlepoint - Day 2

We went out for a walk around Castlepoint, to the lighthouse and the surrounding rocks, to see what we could see. Castlepoint was named by Captain Cook in 1770 because of the castle-shaped rock. In 1913 the lighthouse was built, and remained manned until 1988 when it was fully automated. Along the way we saw the ubiquitous red-billed gulls, and also some variable oystercatchers, which stood still long enough for us to photograph them:

Variable oystercatchers - taken by me this time

The weather in the morning was warm and sunny, but after lunch it started to cloud over. We decided to drive into Masterton to see what it had to offer. On the mountain road between Castlepoint and Masterton we spotted a couple of eagles. Well, I say eagles, but a subsequent check found them to be, in all probability, Australasian Harriers. They look like this:

An Australasian Harrier in flight

In Masterton, we walked around the Queen Elizabeth Park, but failed to go on the mini railway as it was closed for its annual engineering inspection. The aviary contained some random birds, for which there were misleading information panels about the contents of the cages. There was also a deer park, but we didn’t locate that until much later, and decided that we’d done enough walking around, and, anyway, we knew what deer looked like.

We returned home over the mountains, then nipped into the pub for a couple of Tuis. It was a full moon that night, so I took some photos of the full moonrise over the Pacific:

Moonrise

Dinner was a Thai green curry, which I had cooked back in Wellington and brought with us. There was a very good reason for this – the accommodation is not particularly modern, and in common with holiday rental properties throughout the world, is not particularly blessed with good cooking equipment. Fortunately it did have a microwave, so all we had to do was cook the rice. Among other features of the bach is the lack of mains water – we brought our own drinking water, and used rainwater caught in the two 3,000l tanks for everything else. It is incumbent upon users of the bach to be frugal with water to prevent it running out. This seems to be the case for many of the properties that we saw around town – I’m not sure if it applies to all of them or whether there is actually no mains water available at all in Castlepoint.

Labour Day Weekend

The Labour Day weekend is akin to the Mayday Bank Holiday in the UK – the first warm weekend of spring. Nicola had entered the draw to use the Treasury’s bach in Castlepoint a couple of months ago, and had won, so the place was ours for the using.

We hired a Corolla, and picked it up from the handily-placed Budget rent-a-car place just down Ghuznee Street. Unlike hiring a car in the UK where you’re obliged to find all the damage, and sign a form showing the condition that you take it away in, they just handed over the keys with a cheery “fill ’er up before you bring ’er back in” and waved us off.

I drove it back up the hill, and we loaded up all our stuff to take to Castlepoint – which included bedding and heating as well as clothes etc – it is, apparently, pretty basic. Then we drove to the supermarket to pick up supplies, including water, for the weekend.

Wellington is well served by roads that come all the way into the centre of town, so we were able to hit the road and get onto State Highway 2 pretty quickly, and headed over the Rimutakas to Featherston, Carterton and Masterton, and then on to Castlepoint. SH2 starts out looking like a motorway with several lanes, but quickly reduces down to a single carriageway winding over and through the mountains, so the putative 100kph speed limit is rarely achieved. We reached Masterton after about 2 hours’ drive, and stopped off to look around and have a cup of coffee. Then we continued on to Castlepoint, a further 45 minutes’ drive to the coast.

We found the house after enquiring at the pub, as we had been given misleading directions which labelled it “No. 12” when it was in fact “No. 60”. A small difference! We unloaded and arranged our belongings, then went for a walk along the shore to see what was at the far end. A lagoon, and the place where they store all the boats that go out during the day, we found. The wind was doing interesting things with the sand over the beach, but as we didn’t have our cameras with us I can’t provide documentary evidence of this. We then decided it would be a good idea to spend our first night down at the pub/restaurant, where we had an entirely agreeable fish’n’chips and vegetarian platter, washed down with some Tui beer and white wine.

On the way back to the bach, we noticed that the almost-full moon was rising over the Pacific Ocean:

Moon over the Pacific

That was Day One of our Labour Day weekend.