East Cape Trip

One of the most rugged and uninhabited places in New Zealand is actually reasonably accessible from Auckland: the East Cape. Yet almost nobody goes there. Nobody lives there. It doesn't have many places to eat or stay, other than the occasional farmstay and backpackers. And there are basically no tourist attractions. Travellers and Kiwis alike tend to avoid it, apparently only because it's a bit out of the way as you're travelling in a rough north-south line between Auckland, Taupo, and Wellington.

All of which is to say that there's not much to do, other than see some ridiculously spectactular landscapes and seascapes. It's a fantastic place to visit, especially if it's sunny.

New arrival Jesse and I did it over a 48-hour marathon road trip earlier this week (we're on Spring Break here). We had a great time; while almost all of our time was spent in the car, the scenery was gorgeous, as were some places that we visited only as unintended-but-foreseen side effects of making a roundtrip between Wellington and the East Cape.

Pictures and descriptions to come. In the meantime, here's a map, with noteworthy points indicated numerically. If you're keeping score at home, the East Cape proper is only the bit between Gisborne (#4) and Ohope (#8). Other regions driven through include the surprisingly beautiful Hawke's Bay (#2), the perfectly snowy Tongariro National Park (#9), and the Wairarapa and Kapiti Coast (the coastal and inland regions closer to Welly in the south).