Friday 01 March

Te Kaha, western side of the East Cape
Last night it rained. It drizzled for most of the evening and we sat in the camp kitchen to play cards. We were the only people there. Then in the night, early, around 01, I woke to the sound of rain hammering down. It went on and on, I had to put my waterproof on in order to go to the toilet. Miraculously we didn't get wet inside the van at all, any dampness I took back in after a couple of trips to the toilet. It's the first time we have had to deal with heavy rain when we have had the bed made up. Fortunately I am still quite agile and was able to crawl around in the back of the car and dismantle the bed and stack everything up. John took the tent canopy down and rolled it up into it's bag. The two plastic sheets I brought with me, essential camping items in any country/climate, were invaluable. I rolled all the bedding up in them so that it stayed reasonably dry. We drove through heavy rain to Gisborne to do some shopping and then on up the east coast. It rained quite hard until we were well up the coast, and then it was intermittent drizzle. We had no real plans about where to stop for the night, but decided to head for the campsite at The Araroa, right at the head of the peninsular. It sounded like a lovely spot. However it had been taken over completely by the workmen on the gangs of labourers installing fibre optic cables throughout the area, as a temporary base. We had passed several groups of them as we had driven up. The facilities at the site were horrible, grimy and smelly. So we decided to journey on, down the west side of the peninsular. By this time the rain had completely disappeared and given way to blue skies and some fluffy clouds. We looked in on a couple of other campsites and they were also not very clean or well maintained. We had given up and were headed for a motel when we came across a Campsite at Te Kaha, not mentioned in our RG. It is excellent, very large but at the moment sparsely populated. The facilities are fine for the number of people here at the moment, but they would get a bit busy if the site were full.
It is so much warmer, I am sitting outside in just a T-shirt and shorts at 19.45, other nights I would have been in fleecy bottoms and warm sweater by now. However some black clouds have been rolling in. Maybe more rain tonight! The East Cape is a very rural area, the majority of the population are Maori. The scenery in pretty rolling countryside and some mountains, it is mostly green pastureland, but there is some commercial logging. The roads were better than we had expected, they are narrow in places and very winding, but in good condition. The coastline is the stunning thing here, with bays and promontories, surf rolls in over rocks, white giving way to blue and turquoise; and that's on a dull day. When the weather is really good it must be so beautiful.