The sun was shining but slowly fading as we left for a visit to Kaitaia which is about 25 minutes from here going north. We passed the bridge where we understand that work has been going on forever and a day and low and behold one guy was working whilst the other was asleep in his dump truck. So things are normal here then.
Kaitaia is a smallish town with a real mixture of shops and a number of Pawn shops as well. We briefly visited the bank for a moment to change some Travellers cheques and then walked around the town. We visited a retailer of sports gear they also sell tents which was the prime purpose for us visiting the shop. They appear to have everything we need for our South Island camping trip, tents and all the extra bits and pieces that you need.
The price of fuel is very cheap in NZ; see photo and this works out at the current rate of exchange as Unleaded at £0.62 per litre and Diesel at £ 0.53 per litre a little cheaper than the
We left town and headed for what is called
We also visited the beach further up at Waipapakauri and also looked around the Top 10 campsite there. This was also nice and clean and well organised. Most of these areas were very quiet as the peak season for this area does not start until December when the children go on their summer holidays.
We left there and took the back roads back to Awanui Junction (crossing actually), through fields with so many cattle it was amazing, and stopped for a quick ice cream before returning home for a nice shepherds pie.
We intend to drive all the way up route one to
