Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Tuesday 11th November-A trip to Kaitaia

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 UK.

We left town and headed for what is called Ninety Mile Beach via the airport. The terminal is a small hut and there was actually a small aircraft there. Ninety Mile Beach stretches from Ruakawa Bay in the north all the way down to Ahipara. This is great if you have a 4x4 or any other type of all wheel drive vehicle but not for a front wheel drive Toyota Previa. Ahipara is a smallish town by the beach and most of the vehicles there were 4x4‘s.

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 Cape Reinga sometime soon and that will mean that during this year we will have been to the top of New Zealand at Cape Reinga and the bottom at Stewart Island.