Napier ; Te Urewera National Park ; Gisborne ; East Cape ; Rotorua

(posted from The Coffee Club, Taupo, NZ)
(This post covers 20 - 23 March, 2013)

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Saturday, 23 March -

We woke to a sunny but chilly morning at Lake Okareka this morning. By ‘chilly’, I mean mid-Fifties. At that kind of temperature New Zealanders are still wearing shorts, tee-shirts, and jandals.
After pack-up this morning we drove into Rotorua to the Starbucks I found on ‘Wi-fi Finder’ (an app on the iPad) for the free wi-fi. We had coffee and a scone while collecting our email and checking the telephone machine at home.
We then took the advice of our ‘New Zealand Frenzy’ tour book and drove to the town park for a look at the thermal features, i.e., boiling water, bubbling mud-pots, and sulfurous steam. We walked the park and took photos for an hour and then walked through the Saturday Market at the edge of the park.
After lunch in the park, we moved on to the Redwood Forest on the south edge of town. The story goes that this forest was replanted with California redwoods after the native trees were all cut down because the redwoods grow faster. But when they attained a cutting height they were too magnificent to take and the forest became a park and a memorial grove. In any case, it is indeed a magnificent sight today.
We walked the yellow-blazed trail which took us to an overlook of the commercial thermal park below. The geyser rewarded our efforts by erupting and we had a great view over the city and well beyond Lake Rotorua. The walk to the overlook took us 50 minutes and the downhill walk back 40. Along the way we saw the strangest thing. As we approached we thought it must be a dead possum but then we realized it had a rabbit-look but, wait, no, it had a kangaroo look. Was it a wallaby? We took a photo and will have to look into that.
By then it was 1500 and time for one more thing before figuring out where we were staying tonight. We could stay at Lake Okareka again but there was nothing else in Rotorua we wanted to see. We don’t have any interest in the commercial thermal parks or Maori shows for tourists.
We drove south to the mud pools at Waiotapu. These are bubbling, gurgling, splatting, sputtering, and steaming mud pools and it’s funny to watch them.
We then drove to the nearby Waikite Valley thermal pool, hoping to buy a soak. This particular site was built and is run by the local community. It depends on a super-hot geyser and its water is cooled by running down over terraces built for this purpose. The main pools look like swimming pools but the water is about 40 degrees Celsius. But the draw for us was the private rooms. These are rooms with the back open to the fields and sky and an open roof, providing a private view out. The pool is six feet in diameter with seating and with a steady stream of hot water coming in. The room also has a shower and undressing/dressing area as you enter. For $18 a person you get the private room for 40 minutes. In practice, the girl who took us to the room gave us about 50 minutes. After the time expires, you’re welcome to use the public pools until closing at 2100.
We stripped down and didn’t bother with swimsuits in our own little nirvana. Our session started at 1700 and the sun was now lower in the sky and shadows starting to get longer. The sky overhead was deep blue and in the distance we could see sheep grazing on a hillside. Just outside our room on the viewing side were flax plants, giving us a sense of being hidden from view though I’m sure any sheep with binoculars could get an eyeful.
Our soak was perfectly timed. The water was hot enough that we were starting to overheat as the time ran our and a shower felt great.
After our soak we loaded back into the van and set the GPS for a freebie campsite about 40 minutes away near Taupo. This one is Reid Farm and it’s a bit of an odd one in that it’s close to a destination popular with tourists yet it’s free. It’s along the river and there aren’t many level places there but we managed to snag one out by ourselves. This is one of the more crowded camps we’ve been in but then again, it’s a Saturday night.
After supper we went to the laptops but didn’t last long. It’s only 2030 and I’m ready to call it a night. I notice it’s getting dark earlier now. Until recently it seemed twilight would start at 2030 and the sky would still be light at 2100. But tonight darkness came on around 2000 and the sky is fully dark at 2030.

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Friday, 22 March -

This morning as Labashi did her thing I took a short walk and took photos of a line of rain showers out over Tokomaru Bay and made a short video clip of this beautiful bay.
After pack-up we headed north. When we first saw this road around the East Cape on the map, we thought it mostly ran close to the sea but instead it mostly ran inland among the hills and was very, very twisty. Every half-hour or so, however, we’d drop down to a small village along the sea and each of them lay in a pretty little bay with steep, heavily overgrown hills around it.
The faces we see in these villages are almost exclusively Maori. When we stopped for a morning coffee at Ruatoria, the ladies in the shop are speaking Maori among themselves, but the King’s English to us outsiders.
At lunch time we stopped in another little village, Te Aroroa and at the store the teenagers were speaking Maori among themselves and my clerk spoke Maori with the customer ahead of me.
Outside Te Aroroa, we visited a Maruka ‘factory’. The sell Maruka honey, which is a medicinal honey, as well as two floral honeys. We sampled them all and then went with the 18%-active Maruka (a small jar for $33!). The Maruka honey is graded by an independent testing lab which certifies UMF percentage and prices escalate very quickly as the percentage goes up. A 20-per-cent jar the same size (250 grams) was $52.
At Tikitiki we toured St. Mary’s church, which our guide book says is similar inside to a marae. It looks much like a regular Catholic church but the walls are covered in woven panels and all the wood trim (and pew ends) are deeply and intricately carved.
As we traveled today we saw at least a dozen marae. The one at Tokomaru Bay had a work project going on and easily 30 people were wielding tools and working away as we passed by.
Each marae is painted a flat yellow and the woodwork is carved and is painted a shade darker than the barn-red we know, also flat in sheen. Where figures are carved deeply into the wood, the eyes of the figures are the multi-colored paua shell.
Today we also saw a few alternative-lifestyle (hippie) Pakeha folks around. I saw one younger guy I suspect is a fugitive from something. He was riding a dirt bike and wearing big shades. But the thing that made me think he’s a fugitive is he was also wearing a large scarf double-wrapped and up over his head and exposing only his sunglasses and a bit of his nose. It was 70-degrees out and he was on a hard road so cold and dust weren’t the issue. Then again, maybe he’s just eccentric or has some disfigurement.
The afternoon had more beach stretches and we soon started seeing an island offshore. We noticed a cloud over it and saw it was light in color. We realized it was the famous White Island, New Zealand’s most volcanically-active place. And we saw that the cloud goes to the ground level--- it’s being generated by the volcano. I wouldn’t mind seeing it closer but a helicopter trip out there is $455 a person and a boat ride is $255 a person. We’re not THAT into thermal features. We did take pictures from several road-side stops, though.
By late afternoon all the curves, shifting, accelerating and decelerating were getting to us. We took a short break at Opotiki and then turned inland, bound for a campground near Rotorua.
We drove through until 1730, pausing only to gas up.
Our camp for the night is the parking lot of a small park at Lake Okareka, just east of Rotorua.
After supper we took a walk along the lake and looked at racing canoes then walked back the road for 20 minutes and back before turning to our laptops.

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Thursday, 21 March -

We never heard bit of sound all night at our Mokau Falls campsite. On the South Island we occasionally heard locusts (or New Zealand’s version of them) but we’ve not heard the night sounds of a kiwi or a morepork.
This morning dawned dreary but the sky lightened quite a bit by the time we had finished breakfast and packed up for travel. As we began driving we were seeing sunlight on the light-colored rocks of the mountain.
We drove 10K back to the visitor center to ask about visiting a marae we saw on the map. This particular one was associated with the Maori Wars of the 1860s and 1870s and with a famous Maori figure called Te Kooti (pronounced “te caughty”). I can’t do his story justice so will leave that to your Google skills. But knowing we’re so close to a great Maori warrior’s unassailable wilderness hideout is exciting.
However, we learned we can’t just go to a marae. It’s a place not only of community gathering but also of religious significance and there are rituals and protocols which must be followed even to visit in the company of a member. In the end, our chat with the ranger led us to buy a book on those rituals and protocols.
We did have a funny moment with the ranger. He and three others in the office there were all of Maori descent and obviously so. As we first began to describe to the ranger that we wanted to visit the marae if possible, we mis-pronounced the word and said, in effect, “we wanted to see a Maori”. Our host chuckled and said, “Well, there are four of us right here!”. When I changed the pronunciation to “more-EYE” rather than “MORE-ay”, he told us (gently) that we would not be permitted to do that without going through the rituals and protocols and suggested we book a marae-visit trip with a local couple.
We decided we’d better learn more (thus the book purchase) and we’d not attempt to see the 1870 marae of Te Kooti fame.
We drove back along the lake and down the 50K to Wairoa before turning north on Highway 2 for Gisborne. We spent the next several hours driving north and reached Gisborne around 1300. We spent two hours at the very good museum there, learning more about the arrival of Captain Cook in the late 1700s.
Captain Cook was sent on a scientific and exploration mission. The Royal Society of Astronomy requested he view and record measurements of the transit of Venus over the Sun. Using measurements gathered at several widely-dispersed geographic sites, the Society hoped to determine how far the Earth is from the Sun.
He also, of course, was exploring for conquest of new lands and to find the great southern lands which theoretically had to be there to balance the Earth.
Cook first went ashore in New Zealand at what is now Gisborne in October, 1769 and named the bay Poverty Bay. He put boats ashore, a pinnace and a smaller craft, but ended up on the wrong side of the river mouth from where Maoris came out. He left the pinnace with a few men and crossed, only to have Maoris attempt to capture the lightly-guarded pinnace. The first casualty of the Pakeha meeting the Maori happened that day when, after a warning shot failed to turn the Maori, one of them was shot dead.
Captain Cook went on to explore the coast of New Zealand for six months, producing amazingly-detailed maps.
The museum also did a good job of following the history of the area and providing a succint, logical timeline of the development of “Gizzy” up to today.
After the museum we went to an overlook above the city and then to a marae identified as one we could photograph (from the street) at the base of the hill.
By then it was getting on to 1600 and we needed to figure out where we’d stay for the night. We read about freedom camping in this district having an odd policy. You can ‘freedom camp’ but only if you have a permit. The permit costs $10 for two days of ‘free’ camping or $25 for ten days. The guide said we could get the permit online but we had no way to print so we went to the local i-Site for help. Fortunately, they had the forms there and handled the entire transaction. I only bought a two-night pass since we are likely to be out of the district by then.
We then enjoyed a sunset drive up the east coast from Gisborne to Tokomaru Bay. A guide book mentioned the Te Puka Tavern there has good burgers so that became our goal.
We reached Tokomaru Bay in the last half hour of sunset and the light was incredible. We saw our first double-rainbow on the hill before the bay.
We had burgers-and-chips (fries) and drinks in the friendly little pub. As we ate, a young guy came over and, seeing our maps, asked if we were planning a trip. He introduced himself as Tim and said he was a tour-bus driver with a small group. He then went on to give us his recommendations of places to visit all over the North Island. When we said we lived near Amish country, Tim regaled us with tales of his shock at seeing ‘Amish Mafia’ on TV and he wanted to know if it was real.
After supper we found our campsite for the night at a freedom camping site just around the bay. We have a perfect grassy site next to the beach all to ourselves on this balmy evening.

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Wednesday, 20 March -

This morning we had our luxurious showers at our campground before packing up. On my walk last night I had seen a sign for free wi-fi at the i-Site so we drove there this morning for email and a blog post. Lucky for me, there was an espresso-shack across the street. While getting my “mocka-chino” (we say ‘moka’, New Zealanders say ‘mocka’ for the word ‘mocha’) I chatted with the espresso-guy. His very excellent mochaccino was made with DeGreas (I think... it sounded like ‘de-grace’) coffee. As we chatted I mentioned Labashi likes to learn about the Maoris and he pointed to the building behind his espresso shack and said the lady there does Maori weaving and probably wouldn’t mind having visitors.
That’s how we met Anna who looks, dresses, and talks like a late-middle-aged hippie. She has completed a four-year degree in traditional weaving and is starting her masters program. She had various bundles of flax and other weaving materials handy and as we’d ask questions, she’d show us how she splits the flax into fibers for rope or string or prepares a 3/8” to 1/2”-wide piece for basket weaving. She showed us a dozen baskets, each different and a traditional cloak, this one used for a graduation ceremony as well as several decorated dresses.
After Woodville, we drove for several hours through very hilly country to Napier. The city of 55,000 lies on the sea and has palm-lined streets. The suburbs remind me of Marco Island, Florida with the white or light-pastel-colored houses and very neat neighborhoods. Napier is known for its art-deco architecture but we didn’t see a lot of that on our drive-through today. We did see the beautiful Marine Parade drive, though. The a grassy park leads to a wide beach on the green ocean on one side of the street and the other side has homes and then within a block or two the shops and restaurants. The beach goes on for miles and curves around the bay beautifully.
We were following the Pacific Coast Highway toward the East Cape and Gisborne. But I didn’t want to ignore the Urewera National Park though it’s a bit of a detour. At Wairoa we turned inland for 60K of narrow, winding road (much of it gravel) to reach the park and Lake Waikaremoana. This is another rain-forest area and the largest stand of virgin timber on the North Island.
We had been driving all day on dry roads but as we approached the rain-forest we saw the road was wet and then we were driving in a steady rain for a while. We checked two prospective camping areas but they didn’t feel right. One was too soon, in that we were just starting to see the lake and the other was a commercial site which didn’t seem to understand the idea of a level campsite. We drove on to Mokau Falls campground and found a very nice level grassy area all to ourselves. We even have a private beach just down the path a bit.
After supper I took a walk to exercise the Fitbit and look around. The little private beach is about 50 meters across and 20 deep and has a remote, wild feeling to it, as if I’m the first person ever to see it. There’s nothing but wilderness in sight all around.
The rain had let up while we ate but across the lake I could see the low-hanging virga and an active rain shower in the distance but a tiny patch of blue sky above. The forest all around is very thick and lush. At the back of our campsite I found a trail leading off into the jungliest place you can imagine. Only about 20 yards in I found a hand-written sign on a piece of cardboard with the word ‘Camp’ and directional arrows on it. Why it’s there, I have no idea. Not far after was a stream crossing and I was ill-equipped for that so I turned back.
We spent the rest of the evening reading guide books.

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