Hope everyone is well and enjoying summer at home. It's definitely got cold and wintry here recently...not cold enough for the ski season to start yet though unfortunately!
So have had a couple of long weekends since we last updated you. Went away for Easter to the north-eastern part of the North Island. It was a typically rubbish weather forecast for the entire country for Easter, so we chose the least wet-looking place based on the forecast and drove up! We did pretty well compared to most places I think - limited sunshine, but mostly dry at least. Went to Gisborne and Mahia at the north end of Hawkes Bay, then a bit further north up the East Coast. Mahia Peninsula is known for being really pretty, lovely white beaches and bright blue sea, and it was indeed, but we were surprised how rugged and impressive the rest of the coast up there was too. Did numerous short walks, trying to avoid the showers.
Then on the way back, we went inland to Lake Whakaremoana. There's one of the ten "great walks" there so we'd seen plenty of photos of the area, and it'd always looked very pleasant - bt in fact it was really quite spectacular. We were there on a showery, really blustery day which helped with the impressiveness of it all.
A few weeks ago we went for a good long walk in the Tararua Range north of Wellington. It was meant to be a 2 day walk, walking up to and along a ridge on the first day, then staying in a hut en route and walking back down into the valley the next. The weather started off really nice so had some great views early on, though it started clouding over a bit before long (hence the misty photo below!). We got to the hut we were planning on really early, so decided we'd walk down to the next one and just make the walk out on the Sunday a bit shorter. But when we got there, the hut was already full with people who'd just done the short-ish walk up the valley from the car park and who didn't seem to convinced about having us sleep on the floor! So we had a race against the fading light to get back to the car before it was dark! Made it - just! Nearly had to get the torches out! Good job the last bit of the track was wide and well made so we didn't fall over things! So treated ourselves to a nice pub dinner on the way home! Definitely beat the pasta we were going to have in the hut! So it turned into a bit of a long walk with a lot of height gain! Wouldn't have been too bad if we weren't carrying all our overnight stuff....sleeping bags, cooking stuff, wine...!
Had a long weekend for Queens Birthday at the beginning of June. We flew up to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty on the Friday afternoon and rented a bach near Whakatane at the other end of the Bay for three nights. We were hoping to go to White Island (the most active volcano in NZ about 50km off the coast there, with geysers, fumeroles, lots of sulphur e.t.c.), but unfortunately the weather was too bad all three days we were there so we didn't get to go. There's just a small boat that goes out, and the swell was so big all over the weekend that no boats could get out of Whakatane Harbour at all. Bit of a shame for us geology geeks!
We had a hire car, so we made the most of it anyway and explored some places we hadn't been before. The weather wasn't actually that bad most of the time (just really windy), so we got out a fair bit and did a few nice shortish walks around the East Cape and Mt Maunganui. Also went down to the Rotorua area to satisfy our geology-ness with the geothermal areas down there.
So that's us really.....had a good few day trips out of Welly, and have been to see rugby matches, comedy festival shows and the like in the city.
All's good with us, hope it is with you all too. Bye for now...til the next well overdue update!
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