ECT, Part 2

Our next stop as we head north--still only on the way to the East Cape--is Mahia Beach. Looks like a great little spot, on the north end of Hawke Bay (point #3 on the map). It's actually only part of the Mahia Peninsula (a scenic reserve). This was another spot where I thought "Wow, I could spend a whole trip just here alone."

As you head north towards Gisborne from there, you also go through the highly-rated Morere Hot Springs, which, unfortunately, we didn't try. (At the same time, hot springs are a dime a dozen here, so it's kind of hard to get super worked up over any one of them.)

The first two pictures from this area are from Mahia Beach, while the third is from the road into the Mahia Peninsula. If you surf, this whole stretch of coast is apparently prime Kiwi surfing territory.

From there we drove up to Gisborne (point #4) to spend the night. We ate at The Wharf, which was nice but overpriced (though they have what looks like a very large wine collection--with several bottles priced at over NZ$500, the highest being NZ$950). We stayed at the Waikanae Beach Holiday Park, a backpackers/budget/campground kind of combo-type place. Not too much to offer, and it was absolutely freezing in the units. However, they do have this: they are right on the beach, which was nice.

Gisborne seems like a sleepy town, without much happening, but it is a prime stopping location for roadtrippers. Perhaps its most noteworthy feature is its "easterlyness." This is something that comes up again and again as you travel around the East Cape. While NZ's two main islands are not the most easterly units of land in the world, they are the most easterly units of land with significant populations. So Gisborne is billed as the most easterly "city" in the world and therefore the first "city" to see the sun each day. Therefore it's ahead of everyone else in the world. So there!

As we were freezing, we didn't get a good night's sleep, so we hit the road at about 5:30am. The bonus to doing this is that we got in a huge day of travelling, plus we got to be among the first people in the world to see the sun that day (Tuesday, August 29, 2006). And what would that be worth without a picture? So, here are two shots of that sunrise, for the record.

They were actually taken just north of Gisborne in Okitu, which has a nice-looking beach, and which is just south of Whangara. (Education moment: in Te Reo [or Maori], "wh" is pronounced "f." So "Whangara" is pronounced fangara. It makes for a chuckle when you finish the East Cape at Whakatane. Say it out-loud.) Anyway, you might not know Whangara by name, but many of you do know it. It's the town that was both the setting and location of the filmshoot for Whale Rider. Nope, we didn't take it in. To access it, you must get an escort. And, even if we had wanted to, we'd have missed it, because we were so tired that we forgot its significance as we passed through.

Anyway, at this point we're now definitely out of the Hawke's Bay region and into the East Cape. We basically spent the whole day travelling around it. And this was just a gorgeous beginning to a gorgeous day. Made lots of driving unquestionably worth it. More to come on that front.