Ark II on the East Cape

On Monday, September 3^rd, we decided on a name for our campervan.  We decided we would call it Ark II.  The name comes from a cheesy TV show that aired in the 70s that Charles and his brother Andrew would watch as kids.  A few years ago Charles received some DVDs as a gift from Andrew for his birthday.  The DVDs included a few of the shows they watched as kids, including the full season of Ark II.  The show is absolutely ridiculous, but with the help of our friend Brooks, we managed to get through the entire season while hanging out in Houston over the course of a school year. 

So, after some deliberation about what our campervan reminded us of, we decided that Ark II was the most fitting and comical thing we could come up with.  To read more about the Ark II show click here.  To watch the show on YouTube click here. 

Charles and our campervan the Ark II

Since naming our campervan we have done more exploring of the North Island.  Tuesday afternoon we set off from Blue Lake in Rotorua and headed for the coast.  Our plan was to drive the East Cape of the North Island and find a camper park to stop in somewhere along the way.  We didn’t realize when we set out on this adventure quite how rural and undeveloped the East Cape was going to be. 

As we made our way around the East Cape we stopped to see a few beautiful ocean vistas.  Driving along this stretch of road the majority of people we saw were Maori.  After consulting the guidebook we learned that the North Cape is still very heavily populated with Maori.  The Maori people first landed on the islands of New Zealand on the East Cape, and it seems, that they have continuously occupied the region since.  

Tuesday night we stopped for the night in Te Kaha at the holiday park.  We arrived just before sunset and decided to get some exercise.  We went for a beautiful run along the Pacific Coast Highway as the sun was setting.  It was gorgeous!  Charles went on a few runs on the U.S. portion of our trip, but this was my first run of the entire trip and the views will definitely be hard to beat.  After our run we went back to the camper and settled in to make dinner and watch a movie, Ghost Writer (Wilderness let us borrow a few to take with us on our trip – thanks, Marcel!).  

On Wednesday we continued the rest of the drive around the East Cape.  We stopped at an old church sitting at the ocean’s edge and were approached by two overly friendly horses.  At one point I really thought the horse might get into the campervan with me, he did leave me with some slobber from his muzzle on my window to remember him by – how sweet, don’t you think?

Horse at the historic church on the East Cape

After leaving the church and the horses behind we drove through a few more small towns that were noted in our guide book and saw intricate Maori carvings on the numerous meeting houses.  There were long stretches where there was only one radio station and it was broadcasting in Maori.  We stopped at Tolaga Bay, which has the longest wharf in the entire country of New Zealand.  It was a beautiful bay with a wharf that extends about ¼ of a mile into the bay and although it no longer functions as a port today, it was once a major shipping channel in New Zealand.  The bay is also the site where Captain Cook sought safe haven on the North Island in upon his first discovery of New Zealand in 1769, unfortunately the Cooks Cove hiking trail was closed due to lambing (which is when all of the sheep farmers move their sheep into pastures so they can have their lambs).  We were disappointed we couldn't do the hike, but we loved the bay, it was beautiful and very quiet - we were the only tourists there most of the time.  

Tolaga Bay

Me at the end of the Tolaga Bay Wharf

There is nowhere on the East Cape that has internet, that we found at least, but in some ways it was nice to be isolated and out of touch.  Once we reached Gisborne we stopped into an internet café called Verve to check our email.  Our main purpose to be there was to check email, but we were distracted by chocolate cake and lattes.  It was a delicious late afternoon snack.  Charles checked his email to see if his friend Pauline had written back.  Pauline and Charles were classmates at the Edinburgh College of Art during the summer of 2008 and kept in touch with occasional emails.  When we decided to visit New Zealand on this trip Charles emailed Pauline to see if we could connect.  After several emails back and forth we had set up a visit with her and her husband, Nick, but somehow never exchanged phone numbers or got their address.  So, we were in Gisborne with no phone number or address, but knew that her house was just a few kilometers north of the city off the main road.  Our plan was to see if we could find her on our own and if not we would just park the campervan at a holiday park for the evening.  We set out and drove about the distance we thought it was to her home.  Unfortunately, there were quite a few driveways off the main road.  Since we knew it was a small community and that New Zealanders have been wonderfully friendly and willing to help when we inquired for advice or with a question, we decided to stop into a fish and chip shop, called Ormondo’s, and ask if they knew where we could find our friends home.  

Unfortunately they had no idea where Pauline and Nick lived, but they were very willing to help us with our dilemma.  They offered us a phone book, but Pauline and Nick were not listed.  They tried to think of various farms and homes off the main road, but didn’t have any ideas of which way to send us.  Charles asked if they had internet we could use.  They didn’t, but Storm, one of the women working in the shop offered to let Charles check his email from her smartphone.  We were happy and relieved to find that Pauline had emailed with her home and mobile number.  Storm offered to let us call from the shop’s phone, but she did not recognize the landline as a local number and thought it might be a number on the south island – for a brief second I thought we might be in the wrong town or worse yet, on the wrong island.  Charles dialed the mobile number and a woman answered.  He asked for Pauline and was told that there was no one there by that name and that he had a wrong number.  I figured maybe he had misdialed, and encouraged him to try again – he reached the same woman.  Hmm, the only thing left was to try the landline she had given and hope that we were not too far away.  Charles dialed…

Success!  We reached Pauline and she gave us the address and told us to hurry because tea was on.  We thanked the lovely ladies working at Ormondo’s and received a few excellent travel tips for the South Island from Storm (thank you – we can’t wait to get to Milford Sound and try out the kayaks and eat some ice cream in Arrowtown).  We plugged Pauline’s address into the GPS and we were off again.  Luckily this time we found the house and were greeted by Nick and Pauline and a nice warm dinner.  

More about our fabulous hosts to come in the next post!