Day 36 Tolaga Bay, Waineka Gorge and Ohope Beach

Today came to life with a little water.  It's raining, not hard but raining just the same.  Undaunted we got ready to go and do more exploring.

 However, before we took off we spent a few minutes saying goodbye to two new friends.  Dave and Pat Aitchison live in Christchurch but enjoy the RV lifestyle and right now are travelling around the North Island.  They were gracious enough to give us a fair bit of insight regarding travelling in New Zealand.  Especially around Christmas and summer holidays in the South Island which gets really busy.  They are very nice people and we hope to run into them again.

Dave and Pat Aitchison


The park we were staying in was located right at the wharf that we wanted to see.  It is supposedly the longest wharf in the Southern Hemisphere at 660 meters.  Its heyday was from 1929 to 1940 when the shipping trade was booming in Tolaga Bay. 


Wharf at Tolago Bay




It's a long way to the end.



Tolaga Bay is protected by high cliffs on either side which makes for some pretty stunning scenery.

We walked out to the end of the wharf before heading back into town to gas up.



The end of the Wharf

Once we were fueled up we started for Ohope Beach but to get there we had to go south to Gisborne before heading inland and across the cape to the other coast.  We didn't spend a lot of time sightseeing or stopping for pictures but we did come to one area that we just had to stop. Makorori Point gave us a terrific viewpoint of not only Makorori Beach but the next beach to it as well.



Hills above beach





We finally reached Gisborne and turned north on Hwy 2.  We did
notice that around Gisborne there was a lot more agriculture being grown.

The rolling hills continued to dominate the landscape and we did notice a few more sheep in this area but we are still seeing more cattle than sheep to date.

One of the more interesting parts of the drive we were looking forward to was through Waineke Gorge.   We were either going down a bunch of winding S turns or climbing back up through similar turns with dense forests on either side of us.  The rest of the time we were travelling along the floor of the gorge with the tree covered hills or small mountains shooting straight up.  The only downside was that it started raining just before we entered the gorge and continued throughout the drive.. It did diminish the view as we were not able to see much of the mountains that surrounded the gorge and it made picture taking just about impossible.  However, I put my fragile, sensitive body on the line, battled the elements and managed to get a few pictures.  Even with a less than stellar view it was pretty impressive.

We left the gorge and had a fairly uneventful drive to Ohope Beach where we were going to spend the night.  Well, uneventful except for a slight delay.



There's always a couple that just can't wait.



It wasn't long after getting through the traffic jam we reached Ohope Beach and called it a night.