Actually, it was Tatapouri to Te Araroa today, with a detour back to Gisborne to fill up with petrol.
So Tatapouri was where we glamped last night, listening to the sea and the wind as we fell asleep. It was great. But noisy, what with the sea and wind. At times it sounded as though it was raining. The wind dropped some time during the night and it was much stiller and quieter, except for what I’m guessing was a night-trilling cicada. Or maybe it was a bird, don’t know, except whatever it was, it was persistent.
Up and away early this morning. The planned detour for the day was to the historic wharf at Tolaga Bay and then a walk up the hill to view Cook’s Cove. It was a steepish walk up steps to start with and then a more gentle up and down track through sheep-grazed paddocks to the viewing point. We didn’t go down to the cove itself – too many more steep steps.
From there it was on to Te Araroa where we are for the night, with smaller detours to another historic wharf at Tokomaru Bay (and a pie for lunch) and, a bit later, to Ruatoria.
A bit of drama late in the day when we went for a drive to Hicks Bay to visit yet another historic wharf from back in the day of trading scows and small coastal steamers. We were driving back when we saw a car stuck in the sand on the beach, a German tourist as it turned out. We weren’t sure how we could help as we weren’t going to attempt to tow him out. But we couldn’t drive on past either. Lew managed to direct him to firmer sand but there was one final section where the car repeatedly bogged down. Luckily a passing DOC worker saw what was happening and with his 4WD, after two or three goes, managed to tow the car out. One very grateful tourist.
Oh, one more thing. There just above the beach was a yacht. The DOC worker told us it had been dragged up there by locals after they found it washed up on the beach a few days ago. The hull was in remarkedly good shape and, so Lew told me, a testament to Kiwi boatbuilding of the seventies. It was, he said, a 22-foot Beachcomber, “one of the few built with a steel fin keel rather than the more common bilge keels, or even more rare centre boards”. He also said it would have come around the coast, probably from Opotiki.
Off Highway One 