Patrick and Kari's Travels

Our host family returned from their vacation on Monday to find their house and business still in order thanks to our hard work. It was not really that hard, we just fed the animals and answered a few questions from the guests and paid the cleaning lady.

Since we stayed around all weekend to look after the place they let us kick off a little early on Tuesday to sight see. We wanted to see some of the beaches that this area is famous for so they told us of a couple of their favorites. We packed up the car with sunscreen, some food, plenty of water and took off.

We headed north from Kerikeri to Matauri Bay, which was the first beach along the scenic loop we were going to be following that afternoon. Matauri Bay was a beautiful beach that was open enough to the ocean to get some ok waves. It is where most beachgoers go if they want to play in the water (we saw plenty of body boarders and surf kayakers). It is also what is considered a busy beach in the area, although we saw maybe 50 people along the whole half mile of beach, which we were told was a busy day. Another interesting thing about Matauri was that it was not very sandy. Instead it was covered in seashells, some broken into tiny little pieces the size of buttons and some still whole. The water here is so clean that it almost glows turquoise and deep blue in the intense New Zealand sun.

After a short visit at Matauri we left and headed further north along a very pretty but very small country road. The roads here are very narrow with no shoulders and not very well maintained. In places the road has started to slide away and instead of fixing the slide they put a wooden fence halfway (not an exaggeration) into the road to block off the gaping hole that drops away down a cliff. The speed limits are very funny because the posted speed in many places is often not obtainable unless you are driving a Ferrari.

We continued to stop at the beaches along the way and explore each one a little to get a feel for what they were like so that we can return to which ever suits our mood in the future. After reaching Tauranga Bay we turned around and headed for Mahinepua Bay which Betty said had a nice 2 hour hike out a peninsula.

The hike was gorgeous as you can see from our pictures here. It was easy going for a time but just before we could reach the final point, which didn’t look to have the greatest view, we ran into a problem. Gorse, our nemesis. It had completely taken over the trail and as we were both in sandals and beach attire we were in no mood to fight through a whole sea of it to get to the last point which was not even all of the way to the end of the peninsula. Although we both hated to we turned back and spent some time on the beaches that were tucked into coves located on the hike.

After we got back we stuck our feet in the ocean and had a light snack before heading home to eat a nice meal at Avalon.

Patrick