Having booked a few days off over Christmas to go to Ohope and meet both sets of parents, we decided it would be nice to see a bit more of New Zealand. We went up the East Coast of the North Island and spent 3 nights camping at various locations along the way.
It was my last day at WHK on the 18th December so we planned to travel up on the Saturday morning... We were finally packed and ready to go by about 2pm. Surfboards were on the roofrack, chillibin filled with beers and cider in the boot, tent and sleeping bags were packed and off we went.
Our first campsite was at Blackhead Beach and we wanted to do the five hour drive in daylight. Unfortunately as we started to go over the Rimutaka's it started to rain and the boards on the roof slipped. The bungies that we were using to hold them onto the roof failed and the next thing we knew the boards were flying down the road behind us. Luckily there was no-one behind us and both boards were in padded bags which protected them - my board being the bigger board came off worst but luckily it protected Steve's board. Unfortunately this meant that I couldn't do any surfing until it had been repaired as the scratches were quite deep and went through to the inner core of the board.
The campsite at Blackhead was basic but the owners were friendly and the facilities were clean. We set up the tent, had some dinner and a few ciders and went for a walk down the beach. The sun was starting to set so we were about to turn back, just as a chap on a quad bike was travelling past. He jumped off the bike and threw us the keys saying "you'll never make it to the point before sunset, take the bike and return it to me when you get back - I'm the first caravan on the left as you go into the campsite" and with that he walked off leaving us with his bike. Well it would have been rude to say no so off we went...
The next morning we were up bright and early to carry on up the east coast towards Hastings, Napier and Gisborne. We wanted to find somewhere that could fix the board so we stopped in Napier, however they said it would take a couple of days to fix the board so we bought some resin and decided to fix it ourselves. We wanted to get quite a bit closer to where we had to meet our parents so we carried on up to Tolaga Bay. The bay is very shallow; in the 1930's a long wharf - the longest in New Zealand - was built to accommodate trade ships.
We walked to the end of the pier which still had the railway tracks on it... and seemed to be very popular for fishing, it was a beautiful evening...
The campsite here again was lovely - right on the beach and everyone so friendly. Many campsites in NZ have what they call a camp kitchen which holds ovens, hobs, toasters, fridges etc and we decided to use them to cook as it meant that we would mingle. The vast majority of people over here are so friendly - everyone helps everyone else out.
Rather than go up around the point we decided to go back through Gisborne and try to find Rere Falls which we had been told were quite spectacular. These are the falls:
A little bit further up the road was Rere Rockslide - on a hot day you can slide down these but you would need a blow up ring to protect your... assets... It wasn't very hot today so we gave it a miss - next time when Steve's back is a bit better we will be sliding down...
Instead of going back to Gisborne to get back to SH2 we carried on up the smaller road... which turned into a gravel road and then into a dirt track... it was very dusty as you can see by the back of the car...
So Steve decided to give it a bit of a rinse...
This is the route we took to get to Ohope: not the most direct but it was good fun :)
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