What an absolute pearler of a morning and although our room at the Te Kaha Resort essentially faced west it was still quite magical to see the pink appear in the clear sky out our bedroom window.
One of little luxuries with this 3 night,4 day road trip is that neither of has to prepare breakfast for the other.
So it was two poached eggs with bacon on toast and a hot strong,long black to go with it.And we were set up for the day.
Our room at the Te Kaha Resort has been with all we could want although when we return we will go up one floor for an even more expansive view of the Pacific Ocean.
We hit the road heading further eastwards before 10am with Anaura Bay in our sights by the end of the driving day, whenever that may be as long as it is before our first gin and tonic is due.
We had started to notice yesterday as we drove east of Opotiki the increase in horticulture that has occured since our last time on Highway 38.The big Kiwifruit packhouses from the Bay of Plenty are supporting
local growers,many of them Maori Trusts,with sophisticated set ups of kiwifruit blocks with shelter belting that looked like a lot of money had been expended to get them going.And today this continued to show up as the road followed the coast towards Raukokore.
There is not a lot of flat land on this coast but now most of it is either set up for kiwifruit or the traditional growing of maize.
We were actually only a short distance from the resort when glancing out to sea it appeared that White Island might have been erupting.
This bought us to a sharp halt as we looked more closely at what appeared to be a larger plume of stem emitting from the crater which was more visible to us from the location we were now in on the East Coast road.However nothing abnormal was showing on Geonet.com so we put the extra plume of steam down to the calm wind conditions.
outside noting the large number of people in the graveyard were named Stirling who also happened to be the name of the man who designed and built the church.It seemed as though he left plenty of offspring behind when he passed on.
Cape Runaway has always been a place we would have loved to visit but there is no road access nor a formed track one could walk so we again just admired an important headland named by Capt James Cook as he journeyed around NZ.He gave it the name he did as two Maori canoes ventured out to his ship,looking hostile as he rounded the headland but then ran away as he ordered a cannon fired to scare them off.
Highway 38 then starts to head more inland as it cuts across towards the eastern coastline and we cruised past Hicks Bay where we have stayed a couple of times previously and were soon at Te Araroa.
By now the weather had cooled further as the cloud cover gathered and after a quick look at the large 600 year old pohutukawa that sprawls on the edge of the grounds of the area school we headed for
It was a lovely coastal run with pleasant scenery.But then our plan was foiled as we encountered road cones in the middle of the unsealed road and a sign that had fallen over which when we lifted it declared Road Closed
We turned around and drove back to Te Araroa,bought our Lotto ticket and two pies for dinner At the Four Square store and headed south again on Highway 38.
We hadnt driven far and we came across a New Zealand road block although this time it was a herd of cattle instead of a flock of sheep being moved down the highway.Everything was well managed by a vehicle in front and another at the rear and the cars taking their time to drive very slowly through the animals walking on the road.
Our short stop at another Anglican church at Tikitiki was well worth while and this time we did have access to the inside of the building so we could take in the intricate Maori carving on the walls and the detail of names of men from the local area who had served and died in
the First and Second World Wars.
