Road trip, East Cape, North Island, New Zealand

17th November – 20th November 2017

Day 1: Rotorua – Opotiki

After leaving the hostel, we had a two hour drive along the coast. The weather was gorgeous, so it made the views so much more beautiful. The roads were pretty narrow and windy, so it was like being on a rollercoaster at times, as we drove along.

We arrived at our first night’s stop at around 11am. We were staying in a cabin on a campsite and luckily, we were able to check in straight away – not that it made much difference because we didn’t have to carry our bags anyway.

After we had checked in, we drove back to Opotiki centre to have a look round there. When we got there, we realised there really wasn’t much to do. I had previously done some research into what there was to do in the area and one of the main things from Opotiki is to do bike rides along the coast. We looked into this but to hire bikes, it would have been $80 for us both and we didn’t want to spend all that money on some bikes, when we were staying half way up the cycle path anyway, so had the views from there.

We drove up to the start of the bike track anyway to have a look, and to see if there were any cheaper bikes available up there. As there weren’t, we took a couple of photos and drove back to the campsite.

Back at the campsite, it was time for lunch. We made some tuna wraps with salad, which were just enough for us. After we had eaten, we had to decide what to do with ourselves for the afternoon, and as the town was so deserted, we decided that we would stay clear of there.

In the end, we decided on going to the beach: the weather was nice and hot and the beach was just on the other side of the sand dunes, so we got ourselves changed and ready to go over. When we got to the beach, we could believe how quiet it was: there was no one else on it besides us, yet the weather was so nice! We picked a spot and put the towels down to sit on them. We must have been sat down less than two minutes, before I was being eaten alive by sand flies. This gave a perfect explanation into why there was no one on the beach, including us after we had packed up again.

We walked back to the cabin and researched anything else to do in the area – we were running out of ideas though, as it was such a small town. We found another beach, which was recommended in the brochure that the lady in the office gave us, so we decided to have a drive out to there.

When we got there, it was also empty; although this could have been because it was a weekday. We sat in the car for a while, contemplating what to do, before deciding to get out and have a look. Unfortunately, we didn’t even make it onto the beach this time, because it was a muddy beach and it didn’t look inviting at all. We stood there for about thirty seconds, before getting back in the car.

For the last time of the day, we drove back to the campsite. We gave up completely on looking to go somewhere, so we decided to lie out on the grass outside our cabin. We bought an ice cream from the shop on the campsite, so sat and enjoyed that in the sunshine. When it got too hot, we went for a dip in the pool, but that wasn’t overly clean, so we lasted less than five minutes in there.

After exhausting all of our options, we decided that we would just lie out on the grass for the rest of the afternoon and play cards. We didn’t really know many card games, so we were limited on that too, and Joe got bored of losing very quickly, but we kept ourselves entertained for a while. To make things slightly more interesting, we decided to bet on who was making tea: the first to three was the winner and the loser was in charge of tea. It wasn’t exactly a challenging tea, as it was already ready, it just needed reheating. As I was the winner, again, I got to sit back, for once during dinner, as I let Joe sort it all out.

After we had eaten our tea and had our showers, we got into bed to watch some TV on the laptop. We needed an early night, as we wanted to be up early the next morning, to head off and explore the next part of East Cape.

 

Day 2: Opotiki – Hick’s Bay

We set an alarm for 7.30, with the plan of leaving for 8, but by the time we were up and ready and had eaten some breakfast, we didn’t leave until 8.30. We had another longish drive ahead of us, as we were heading over two hours further along the east coast, to Hick’s Bay for the night. Even though the maps app got it spot on, we seemed to drive right past the place where we were staying – I think this was down to the fact that there weren’t any signs outside it or anything to indicate that it was the B&B we had chosen.

When we eventually found the right lane to drive up, we made it to the house. Joe had spoken to the woman on the phone in the morning, and she explained that the key would be in a locked box on the outside of the house, and she gave him the pin for it, as they might not have been around. We pulled up to the house, and Joe got out to find the key. He circled the house a few times but wasn’t successful in locating the key; he walked to the guest house where we thought we were staying and circled that as well, but still couldn’t find the key. We weren’t too bothered at this point, as it was too early to check in and we could leave our bags in the car anyway while we explored, so we drove back down the lane – which sounded like it was ruining the underneath of the car as it was so uneven.

About fifteen minutes further along the coast was a little (and it was tiny) village called Te Araroa, which we had decided to visit based on research I had done. We drove into the village, which consisted of an information centre (which was closed), a café (which had to close while we were in there due to it being too busy after getting three orders) and a small supermarket. We parked up, but the weather was that bad, we didn’t want to get out until we had a plan. We also decided that this would be a good time to fill up the car but we had no idea whether it needed petrol or diesel and everything in the car was in Japanese and the village had no wifi or public telephones – we weren’t having a great experience so far.

We debated our options a little more before going into the one and only café for some lunch – it was our only option. We had to wait a while for our food – I don’t think they had ever had more than two customers at once before and now they had three groups of people (including us). While we were in there, we asked the lady behind the counter if she knew of anywhere to get some wifi or use a phone, as we really did need to know what to put into the car: she was kind enough to lend us her mobile, so Joe was able to ring the car hire place and ask them.

After lunch, we nipped into the shop to get a couple of bits for tea, before getting some petrol and heading onto the beach. We lasted about two seconds on the beach as it was so cold and windy: the waves were crashing against the sand so much.

Once we had seen beach, we piled back into the car. According to the maps app, the East Cape Lighthouse (the easternmost point in New Zealand) was only twenty more minutes down the road. We had planned to be there for sunrise the next morning, as we would technically be the first to see the sunrise for that day, but we wanted to have a look at where we were going, so that we knew for the morning, so we had a drive over.

The journey there wasn’t quite as short or as smooth as we expected it to be: it was twenty kilometres over bumpy, gravelly roads, with a cow blockage along the way, so we made it there in about forty minutes. As it was so windy, it took us a few minutes to mentally prepare ourselves to get out of the car, as we had eight hundred steps to climb to reach the lighthouse (according to the sign at the bottom).

We finally made it out and made it up the eight hundred steps – although it was a lot further than I expected and the wind didn’t help. We made it to the top and to the easternmost point of the country (we just need to find the southernmost and westernmost now) and stopped for some photos. It got chilly pretty quickly, so we started to make our way back down. As Joe doubted the sign which told us the number of steps, he spent his journey down counting them all and he only got 785, but then he wasn’t sure if he had missed some at the top, so we weren’t sure what the real number of steps was.

On our drive back to the B&B, we stopped off in Te Araroa again, as it has a six hundred year old tree in the grounds of the primary school, which we had somehow missed on our first visit. We stopped to look at the tree – which was huge – and take some photos. During the summer time, over Christmas in New Zealand, the tree is covered in red flowers, so the locals call it their Christmas tree. As it is still spring, there weren’t lots of flowers on it, but enough for us to understand what it must look like at Christmas.

Once we had taken some photos of the tree, we drove back to the house to try again to check in. when we got there, Joe did another two laps of the house but still couldn’t find the key. As there was no one around to help us we didn’t know what to do. As Joe wasn’t having much luck, I thought a fresh pair of eyes might be helpful, so I got out to look too. On my second lap of the house, I found the lock box and luckily found the key – it’s a good job I got out to check!

As it was still relatively early in the afternoon, we didn’t want to stay in for the rest of the night, so we dropped off our bags and decided to head back out. Although the area didn’t really have much to offer, there was a Manuka Honey factory, café and shop nearby, so we thought we would go and have a look at that. On the way out, we met the woman who owned the house and had a quick chat with her.

When we got to the manuka factory, we had a walk in to the café and shop area and had a look at some of the products. As we went to order a drink, the woman told us that the café was actually shut and they were only open for the shop – this was disappointing, so we left.

Instead of buying a hot drink in the café, we drove back to Te Araroa and took our third visit of the day into their tiny shop to buy some hot chocolate powder instead.

As we had done everything there was to do in the area, we went back to the B&B for the rest of the day. The weather was starting to get worse and the sky was full of clouds, and it was raining.

When we got back, we got settled for the evening. We had a hot drink and chilled out, playing some card games to keep ourselves entertained. We had decided on chilli for tea, but there was only one frying pan and it was tiny, so that was a challenge for me – I did it though!

After dinner, we chilled out some more: we played some more card games, before getting an early night, so that we could get up early in the hope of seeing the sunrise (although the weather forecast wasn’t great, so we weren’t holding out much hope).

 

Day 3: Hick’s Bay – Gisborne:

Despite us not being sure of what the weather would be like, the alarm went off at 4am anyway. we didn’t even have to get up to know that there was no chance of seeing the sunrise that morning: we could hear the wind and the rain was battering against the windows. Once our decision was made, we fell back to sleep and set an alarm just before sunrise time, so that we could see if the clouds had shifted at all, so that we could watch it from our balcony. Sadly, it hadn’t, so there was no sunrise for us.

After getting a little bit more sleep than originally planned, the owner knocked on our door just after 7 to ask us if we were ready for breakfast. For breakfast, we were given a feast: we had two fried eggs with bacon, avocado and toast.

After breakfast, we took our time getting ready as we weren’t in any rush to do much in the weather we had. Just after 9, we loaded the car and carried on our journey around East Cape.

On our way to Gisborne, our final stop of the road trip, we stopped off at Tolaga Bay Wharf. Tolaga Bay Wharf is the longest pier in New Zealand, at 660 metres long. Although it was long enough for us, as the weather was awful, and we got soaked, it didn’t seem very long to say it was the longest in the country. We managed to time it quite well, as we missed the heavy rain on our walk down the pier; however, as we got to the end the heavy rain came down again and we were drenched by the time we reached the car.

Once we were comfortable in the car, we carried on our drive towards Gisborne. It was only about forty five minutes further down the coast, so it wasn’t too long of a journey. When we arrived we were able to check in straight away, once we had found someone who worked there, but we couldn’t go to our room yet, as it wasn’t ready.

While we waited for our room to be ready, we had a drive into the centre of Gisborne. It wasn’t far from the hostel but we didn’t fancy doing anymore walking in the rain. We found a nice little café – the only one that was open on a Sunday – and sat down to have some lunch. After we had eaten, we had a little wander around the shops that were open, before driving back to the hostel.

When we got back to the hostel, our room was ready, so we were able to take our bags in and get settled. For the rest of the afternoon we just chilled out in the common area. We watched some Netflix on my laptop and rested, as the weather was too rubbish to do anything else.

At around 7.30ish, we had our dinner, which was already made and just needed reheating. After dinner, we cleared up and went to the room to sort ourselves out for the next day. We organised our things and packed up, before getting an early night, ready for another early start the next day.

 

Day 4: Gisborne – Rotorua

Our alarms were set for 6.15 on our final day of the road trip. We got up and ready to leave, so that we could leave just after 7. It was still a rainy morning but on our way back to Rotorua, to drop the car off, we wanted to stop off at Rere rockslide, to have a go at sliding down the rocks.

When we arrived at the rockslide, we expected there to be more there, than there was: I had read that you needed a boogie board or something to slide down on, as it was too bumpy to do down without anything. As it was something that I found online quite easy, we thought that there might have been somewhere to rent or borrow boogie boards from, but when we got there, there wasn’t unfortunately.

As there was nothing for us to slide down on, and it was still raining, we decided to give it a miss, which was a bit annoying. We got back in the car and continued our drive to Rotorua, which was still around 4 hours away, so we knew we would be a little bit pushed for time.

We arrived back in Rotorua at about five to twelve, and the car was due back at twelve. Joe dropped me off at the travel agents we had been into a few days earlier, so that I could wait there with the bags while he took the car.

Once Joe was back, we got all of our things together and walked down the road to the bus stop, to catch our next bus, to Taupo.

The main point of the road trip was to see the sunrise at the East Cape Lighthouse, because it is one of the places to see the first sunrise of the day, so we were pretty gutted to have missed that due to the weather. Even though we didn’t get to see the sunrise, we still had a good time and made the most of the sights along the way. Renting a car was the only way to have seen East Cape and it made us realise how convenient it is to have a car, as we could just do what we wanted, without having to worry about anything else. East Cape is a very quiet and peaceful area and it was lovely to visit for a few days and have a few days relaxing slightly before a busy few days organised in Taupo.

To travel is to live, Katie x