Easter 2017 Adventures

Hey!

So it’s definitely been a long while since I last wrote up a post. Things at work became crazy busy and to be honest nothing exciting really happened… but now I can proudly say that I have survived my first term as a teacher!Easter 2017 also brought with it Cyclone Cook which spoiled all our plans to go camping at Waikawau like we did last year. So instead we planned a lovely quiet weekend at home… until we got a message from Paul’s mum saying that a tree had fallen on her roof from the storm and she needed help to clear it all up.

So off in the car we went and apart from the odd tree branch and tiny slips alongside the road it was hard to tell a cyclone had been through in the last 12 hours

So Paul and Justin helped clear all the branches etc. from Paul’s mum’s roof and we all enjoyed the warmer weather that Ohope was having compared to Hamilton!
That day also happened to be Paul’s aunt’s birthday so I helped ice the yummy banana cake that Paul’s mum had made earlier.

The next day saw us heading out near Opotiki to Paul’s dad’s farm but not before stopping at Grandads to get lunch and taking it out to Whakatane Heads to eat. The wasps were sightly annoying though! We also stopped by to check out Muriwai’s cave but it was all flooded from the Cyclone passing through so we couldn’t go inside.

Out on the farm there were noticeably less bunnies around to shoot which I guess is a good thing for the farm! Just a chilled night there having a few draaanks 😉

On Sunday we travelled home (to miss all the returning Easter traffic). We improptu-ly stopped by at the Tauwhare Pa and had a wander up to the top to check out the view over Ohope Beach.

On Monday we went exploring yet again – this time with our flatmate Nic as well. We decided to head to the Ruakuri Scenic Reserve near the Waitomo Caves and have a nosy at the natural caves (for free!!). The weather was looking pretty threatening at this point but the rain was holding off for now.

Next stop was the Marokopa Falls which luckily was not too far away. Unfortunately by the time we got there the rain was just passing through and the falls were insanely full from all the recent stormy weather so we didn’t stick around there long – the spray was all up in our faces and it was actually hard to stand on the lookout and gaze at the falls. Will have to go back another day.

Our final stop was Kawhia – we had heard there was a hot water beach and that we would need to ask locals how to find ‘Ocean Beach’. Well, we found Ocean Beach all by our clever selves (there really was adequate signage if you were looking), but we were about 5 hours too early for the hot water beach to be visible as the tide had only just started to go out. Luckily however, the rain had well and truly passed Kawhia and the weather was nice and sunny and the sand was black and warm – how it’s supposed to be on a beach (just a tad windy). If you plan to go to Ocean Beach in Kawhia just be physically prepared for the massive sand dunes you have to climb to get there – I’m sure they picked the tallest one and said ‘yes let’s put the path over this one’.

So, although not at all what we had originally planned for Easter it was a mint weekend and glad that we got out of the house and exploring our beautiful great outdoors.

Until next time,

xx M

Nic’s Notes: