Places
This week covers Wednesday 12th to the following Wednesday – it’s a few days late as we have been busy on the road with our guest vanlifer, Brodie! We started off driving south of Auckland to Matamata, where Lord of the Rings comes to life at the Hobbiton movie set. We then headed east to Mount Maunganui and Whakatane, both beach towns with a laid back vibe. We followed the coast all the way around to the East Cape to see the ‘first sunrise in the world’, and after hitting Gisborne drove inland to hike Lake Waikeremoana. From there we travelled a little further down the coast to Napier and Hawkes Bay, the wine capital of the North Island. We covered a lot of ground!
Weather
It was sunny all week! Brodie has brought the warm weather along with her.
Activities
When we left Auckland with Brodie we had no idea what we had planned for the day. Brodie suggested Hobbiton – the movie set from Lord of the Rings – and we knew we had to go. All three of us are Lord of the Rings geeks and I was pretty much beside myself when we were waiting for the tour bus to take us onto the huge sheep farm that Peter Jackson’s team scouted for the film back in 1998. The verdant, gently rolling hills suited the fictional world of the shire perfectly. We were part of a tour group of about 30 people, with a guide who takes you around the site and shows you where various famous scenes were filmed (we saw the pine trees where Gandalf first arrives – “You’re late.”). The ‘hobbit holes’, where the characters live underground, have incredible attention to detail – you look in a window to see little jars of relish and pickles; one garden has a honeycomb in a pot and faux honey pots for sale. There were immaculate vegetable gardens contained within miniature fences and stiles. Some of the homes are built 90% to the size of people, and some of them much smaller – this is to give the illusion of the actors being much bigger than the dwarf-like hobbits. One particularly memorable detail was that all the mailboxes were beautifully painted and then weathered to look old! It was a dream come true for Lucas, Brodie and Kelly to step foot in the magical world of one of their favourite stories.
We then hit up a free camp spot close to Mount Maunganui (‘The Mount’ to locals) which turned out to be a hidden gem. We parked up at the Kaiate Falls carpark and followed a mini-hike trail to some dramatic, triple-level waterfalls. Further down, another deluge of water pooled into a grotto of mossy cliffs and fern fronds, with the biggest rope swing we’ve ever seen. It was late in the day when we arrived otherwise we might have been tempted! Unfortunately, some local youngsters had also discovered the spot and made us feel very old by keeping us awake all hours of the morning – we left just past 4am to catch the sunrise up Mount Maunganui! This was Lucas and Kelly’s first time waking up before 4am for a long time and took some time before Lucas and Brodie were at the same level of consciousness to keep up with Kelly’s seemingly endless enthusiasm, even before morning coffee has been had.
We had heard that the view from the Mount was best at dawn, and as we puffed our way up the hill we were passed by hosts of very sporty looking joggers, who looked like they hit the summit daily before work. In fact, Mt Maunganui seemed to consist of mainly fit and healthy people living a California-esque beach lifestyles – Kelly and Lucas could see themselves spending some time there if a job was available!
Our second hike was yet another dawn hike. After hitting up the northernmost point of the country less than a month ago we now had an opportunity to go out to the easternmost point of the country. We once again got up at 4am, and in the dark packed up our campsite along the beautiful dune shores outside of Te Araroa. After a short drive along some clay cliffs, we got to a trailhead in the middle of some paddocks. After a sweaty 800 stair climb we came out at the lighthouse that marked the eastern most point just in time to witness the sun come up over the Pacific and softly light up the green hills behind us. After this hike the gang all agreed they’d had enough 4am hikes for the rest of the week.
Brodie found an online report of a natural waterslide out in the sticks, and Harley took us up through the winding hills right to the top of the slide. We bought a boogie board and an inflatable tortoise (although it may have been a turtle… Kelly will probably correct me) to slide down the awesome slippery slope. We took many fun runs, but unfortunately Brodie slammed her posterior on our last ride of the day and had to suffer a tender tushie for the hiking we did over the next few days. We decided to leave the inflatables at the waterslide for future adventurers to enjoy.
Another great adventure with Brodie was a trip inland and up into the mountains, where we booked a night at a hut on one of the Great Tracks of New Zealand, the Lake Waikaremoana Great Track. We intentionally picked the hardest hike, starting at lake level and climbing up to over 1150m above sea level, where our large hut sat on the edge of the escarpment that teetered along the south edge of the lake. Our legs were tired from all the uphill, but not as tired as they would be the next day as we went back down to lake level.
In Napier, we admired the pastel-painted 1930s Deco buildings, wonderfully looked after and bordered by palm-tree lined streets. It is completely different architecturally to everywhere else we’ve been, due to being razed by an earthquake and rebuilt during the heyday of Art Deco design. The oceanfront boardwalk had a spa and pool complex that would have looked inviting on a warm day (it was a bit chilly that morning). That afternoon came the activity that Kelly has been most excited for: yes, wine tasting. We vineyard-hopped all afternoon, from the oldest winery in NZ (Mission Estate), which was housed in a grand colonial style building, to a small, organic winery called Moana Park where we tasted a great variety of tipples, including a cloudy sparkling wine and a delicious Merlot-Malbec that Lucas and I bought a bottle of for our Christmas dinner.
Food
We decided to treat ourselves in Napier, the quaint-but-hip ‘Art Deco’ capital of the North Island. After perusal of the internet Kelly decided on Pacifica, a seafood restaurant that was voted one of NZ’s best last year. After our big hike, it felt good to treat ourselves. We started off with some great cocktails, Lucas, missing ‘Caesars’ back home (Canada’s Bloody Mary), had a tomato-based tequila drink, and the girls chose bubbly. We were served a beautifully presented 5-course tasting meal, with some highlights being the delicately smoked warehou fish mayonnaise appetiser, as well as crunchy polenta-crusted gurnard with thinly-sliced marinated squid ‘noodles’ underneath. Needless to say we are on a strict food budget for the next little while!
Highlights
Our highlight this week was some awesome surfing at Ohope beach near Whakatane (pronounced fa-ka-ta-nay). We rented some boards from a nearby surf shop and hopped over the nearest headland to ‘New Zealand’s Favourite Beach’ – complete with some smooth, fun, intermediate-friendly waves. Kelly started out with a 9’ board and Lucas had a 6’ short board and we both managed to catch some great rides. Brodie borrowed the longboard and had a blast catching some waves too – a memorable day in the sun and the brine! We are hoping we might be able to surf this week in Raglan but the conditions might not cooperate.
Blunders
No blunders this week! Woohoo!
Wildcard
After another full day at the waterslides, and with Brodie’s backdoor bruise, we stumbled upon a hot springs on our drive to our campsite that night. We went in and did the hike up roughly 400m from the road through a dense forest of palm trees called nikau palms. As we got away from the road the sounds, stresses, and signs of the current world dissipated away, until we came around a corner to the springs themselves, gently lit up by the soft sunlight whispering through the trees, and the calm splashes of the stream echoing through the grove. There were three pools and we had them to ourselves. We soaked in wonder, feeling fairly sure that we had slipped into another world with gods and goddesses, magic, and mortals. We soaked for long but not nearly long enough and each walked down individually feeling physically and spiritually refreshed as we came back into the current world.
Alpine and Brine 
Very envious of this week’s activities- wish I was there sharing that experience! Wine tasting and the Shire! What’s not to like about that?! Where next I wonder?
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