Remainder of drive to the East Cape & Tiniroto

We stopped at Tolaga Bay to walk the longest concrete wharf in the southern hemisphere – 600 meters long.

This cave was carved in the cliff face on the right side of the wharf

Check out the waters at the Mahia Penninsula

We got to Tiniroto on Sunday afternoon to find that Jean and Terry had a new family member – Patch! One of their ewes gave birth to two lambs but she was only interested in caring for one of them, so Jean is bottle feeding Patch until she is off milk and eating grass. I had several chances to feed her also. What fun!

 Tiniroto is a small town that consists of a post office, a tavern, the community center, the school, several large stations (ranchs or farms), several smaller stations and a large Maori community. Their house sits on a high rise and has the most amazing views. While driving around over the course of a couple of days, we stopped at Te Reinga Falls. If you look closely in one of the pictures, you can get a hint of the rainbow we saw at the bottom of the falls.

You really have to work at seeing the rainbow in the lower right quadrant. I guess it's expecting a lot of my little camera to get a clear shot of it. Oh well, you can't blame for trying.

The following photos are specifically for our granddaughters Jasmin and Gracie. They are the really serious animal lovers in the family.

 Jean took us to this really cool river to hunt for fossils – and give her dogs, Tigger & Teddy a chance to run around and go swimming. While walking down to the river, we saw one of the most unusual trees we’ve ever seen. See if you can figure out what is so strange about this tree.

 Ernie & I drove to Lake Whakatemoana for the day and walked to Bridal Veil Falls, Aniwaniwa Falls and Papakorito Falls.

Bridal Veil Falls

Aniwaniwa Falls

Papakorito Falls

The road to the lake was quite interesting since it was both sealed and unsealed road (paved and unpaved). What was surpriing is that we saw a sign that said unsealed road for the next 105 kilometers. Since we were just driving another 20 or so kilometers, we weren’t very concerned about that. We’ve gotten quite accustomed to driving un unsealed roads. What was surprising was that the road alternated between unsealed and sealed section without any obvious rhyme or reason as to why. Just to give you an idea of the road, take a look at this photo

 This is a ‘red shield’ highway which means it is a major highway. While this hasn’t been the norm for us in our travels, the point is that it does exist and you need to be prepared for it.

We spend four lovely days with Jean and Terry and said goodbye to them on Thursday as we made our way to Wellington for the U.S. vs. Australia World Rugby Cup game. I don’t even remember the name of this lake that we passed but we were so taken with the fact that the water was so still that you couldn’t tell where the land ended and the water began.

 The only hiccup on the trip to Wellington was that the gorge before Palmerston North was closed because of slippage and we had to take a detour via Saddle Road. What a trip!!!!! This road would be a challenge on any day but with all the traffic now using it – and I mean logging trucks and other heavy trucks – the edges of that road are starting to slip. I don’t know how much longer they are going to be able to use that as a detour. I’m just glad that we don’t have to do that one again.

Ernie just gave me the high sign that it’s time to leave for the game to watched the US play Australia. Actually, we watched the US get creamed by Australia. There was a method to their madness as far as their player selection for the game. Since they will be playing Italy on Tuesday and have a good chance of beating them (while they had no chance of beating Australia), the managers did not play their best players yesterday to allow them to rest up for Italy and avoid any possibility of injury.

While it was not a fun game to watch from that aspect, it was so great being in the stadium with so many fans supporting the USA. The understanding in New Zealand is that the fans support two teams - the All Blacks and anyone playing against Australia. We went to the Chicago bar before the game and were surrounded by US fans. Drank a few beers, talked with a bunch of folks, got our picture taken several times (some because of Ernie's moustache but mostly because we were wrapped in little US flags. We couldn't find any US hats or t-shirts or 'flag-capes.' The only thing we could find were the stringers of mini-flags that you can hang as decorations. There were 40 flags on the string so we cut it in half and we each wrapped our string around our necks - like a collar. Ernie talked about face painting his moustache red, white and blue but chickened out. He's all talk!

We head to Mount Monganui and the Coramandel tomorrow and will spend a week exploring that area before heading back to Blenheim on 10/2. I’ll post more once we settle in there.