Gisborne to Cambridge

The morning looked quite promising weather wise as we left fairly early on our longish journey to Cambridge. The route from Gisborne was flat with fast roads and then, surprise surprise, we came across mountains, twisty roads, hills, you name it we had it. This slowed us down quite a bit but after two hours we were out of the Gorges and ravines.

We saw a number of Hawks hanging on to road kill and each time we tried to take a photo they buggered off. Never mind I suppose if we had more time we could hide behind a bush and wait, but not today.

We passed an ex Volcano near Rotorua, boy this place has changed since we last visited and so we drove in, through, and straight out the other side avoiding the American style roadside Supermarkets and Malls and whatever else they had there.

It was then cross county to Cambridge, we thought we would find a roadside café but it looked like they had been banished to room 101.

We had tried to book our Motel in Cambridge via the New Zealand Tourist website where they place quality marks against the Motels and it has worked well for us except here they did not have a Motel to recommend and so we took pot luck. No good I am afraid, we arrived, the room was small and dark and so we asked for another and this time we were shown a bigger apartment with two bedrooms but still not good, the bath/shower unit looked dirty and the whole place needed a good clean up. But so late in the day we could only accept however we decided to have dinner out, even though we had provisions, as neither of us fancied eating in this place.

In the late afternoon we found that the Wireless Internet link did not reach our apartment (for the want of a more suitable word) and so headed down town to find an internet joint so we could start booking our Australian Hotels, we had some luck here and could book some accommodation but we are going to have some challenges over Easter it would appear.

The bed mattresses were about 40 years old and you could feel each spring perfectly on each buttock which did not make for a good nights rest.

We found quite a nice Bar/Brasserie which we went to for dinner and I must say the food was very good and much better than we had expected. We watched a rubbishy film on TV and then went to bed we have a long day tomorrow.