East Cape

We left the "Sunshine Paradise" of Papamoa on a rainy, windy day and set off on our four-month tour of New Zealand. First stop: a luxury hotel down the street. Chris' parents generously and very thoughtfully bought us a night in the hotel they stayed at during their visit for Chris' birthday. We had until the end of August to book our room, and we decided one last night of clean sheets, kitchen appliances and hot running water would be the perfect start to our epic journey. The rain bleared our windows, but beyond the fog and streaks the beautiful, constant ocean pounded and sprayed amongst the rocks. The lady who showed us our room may have been confused, we came with no luggage, just a plastic bag with the essentials, and a huge teetering stack of library books. The first part of the day was spent on the couch going through all of our guidebooks and finishing off our "wish lists". We ate up the last of our refrigerated foods and enjoyed one last episode of our favourite-show-ever, "Grand Designs".

Since then, we have been driving east, down the coast to Whakatane (White Island departure point) and on to the East Cape, where the pace of life is slow. There are no real towns on the East Cape. Some little villages appear on the map, but their business district encompass a post shop or a motor lodge or maybe a small shop. These towns are few and far between. Most of the time we drove with no one behind us, no one approaching us, no one anywhere. The bulk of animal-life is clothed in leather and dragging a full udder, or showing off a wool jumpsuit. Spring has fully arrived: little wobbly lambs and leggy calves stumble around the hillside, never straying very far from mom.

Last night we slept in a very bare-bones beach-side campsite alongside a herd of cows, calves and horses. During the day we hiked a steep, unexpected, muddy track up into the hills to a lookout over the bay. The area must have suffered some heavy rains because much of the trail was washed out, the stream seemed to have meandered to uncharted territory and we found more than one sign post floating down stream. We persevered and made it to the lookout, breathed a sigh of relief that the track formed a loop, and skidded down the other side to our campsite.

Now I must hand the computer over to Chris. We're like greedy vultures when we come across free internet (Go Gisborne Library!), and this will be the last taste of civilization before we start our "Great Walk" on Friday.