The East Cape

Sunday 15 March Partly cloudy, some showers and light winds 19C Drove 413km

A new roadsign crept into our vocabulary today, 'Pavement Rehabilitation'. Now, to me, that should conjure up a vision of a sad piece of roadside, wrapped in blankets in a peaceful environment, tended by white coated doctors. Roadworks are roadworks where-ever you go, here, they are preceded by a roadsign, perhaps with 'Pavement Rehabilitation' or even 'New Seal'; what does that bring to mind? Maybe something you might see at Donna Nook in Lincolnshire in December? Roadworks, NZ Style, frequently means that the road surface is missing entirely, or the road has been swept down the mountain-side. All roadworks are accompanied by speed restrictions of 30kph, which is widely ignored. As a result, it is not unusual to get a shower of grit or stones from oncoming 4x4's; our hire car has only two stone chips on the windscreen!

After a quick refuelling, Napier soon fell behind us as we headed north up the SH2 on the Pacific Highway. Despite warnings that this could be a very busy road with lots of lorries even on a Sunday, we had empty roads in front of us. On the map this road looks pretty straight; it is not! There are lots of hills and in between them deep river gulleys and gorges, all of which have windy roads going up and down them. After 228km and only one town of any size, Wairoa, we arrived in Gisborne. Gisborne claims to be the first 'city' in the world to see sunrise each day. Some other island nations in the Pacific may dispute this, city as a description is relative. We stopped on the High Street for some lunch and a very busy town, or city, it was too.

North of Gisborne, the Pacific Highway becomes the SH35 and the traffic dwindled to almost nothing the further we continued up the coast. The road roughly follows the coast, but only tantalising glimpses of it can be seen from the road. Shortly after passing through Tolaga, we turned off to Anaura Bay, a short 7km detour. A delighfully peacefully community, Anaura Bay consists of a few houses and a campsite right on the beach. The peace and quiet here is wonderful, the huge beach just had one other person on it, he was fishing surrounded by gulls, oystercatchers and herons.

Back on the 'main' road we stopped in Tokomaru Bay where the choices for an overnight stay were discussed. After consulting the various guides and maps, Te Aroroa and Hicks Bay seemed the obvious places to head to. Both are on the northern end of the East Cape road and after them the road heads west into the Bay of Plenty. En route there, we passed through Ruatoria and Tikitiki, the latter no more than a ghost town.

After a brief stop at a scenic overlook, high above the coast, we wound our way down to Te Aroroa and then shortly afterwards to Hicks Bay. The Hicks Bay Motel is perched on the cliffs overlooking the Bay and has a great view. The motel is a little dated and the walls between rooms very thin, but view from the window compensated for that. The other odd boast for the motel is that they have their own 'Glow-worm Grotto', we found it to be almost a cave, hanging on the side of the cliffs. We had a brief exploration of the bay before dinner and the sun kindly shone for us whilst we were on the beach.

Dinner was eaten in the Motel, a set meal of fish and vegetables washed down with draft beer, adequate but not special. The major entertainment at dinner was the rain which produced a fabulous double rainbow.

Due to the extremely rural location and lack of light pollution, the stars were fantastic, but only one of slept well, the other was entertained (!) by our next door neighbours who 'entertained' each others until the early hours