Travelling North
We were up fairly early so the master packer could finish transferring our stuff for the next week into
one suitcase.
After a leisurely breakfast we started packing stuff into the car around Andy's fishing gear. This was duly achieved and we were off through the gorge out of Gisborne heading North. In the gorge right by the site of the last massive land slip we came across a lorry driver who had broken down, his radiator had blown. There was no mobile phone coverage there so we agreed as soon as we were out of the gorge that we would use our mobile to phone his boss. Our good deed for the day.
We had lunch in Cheddar Gorge with the sand flies and several Maori men who came for a swim in the river.
Andy and I were sharing the driving and in the late afternoon I had the enormous thrill of driving on the motorway through Auckland, and we went over a huge bridge there.
We arrived in Oweira where we had planed to sat the night at about seven thirty. Believe it or not there were no vacancies in any of the hotels or motels there and after a fruitless search we were back on the road again to Weiwera where we eventually found a motel.This was seven or eight kilometres from our first choice of town.
The search was then on for an evening meal so we headed back to Oweira to find a restaurant , we found a supermarket and got the supplies we needed before starting our crusade to find food. We first found a fish and chip restaurant and when we went in they told us they had run out of fish. So the expedition manager had seen another one on the main road so we headed off there. As we arrived we met two Brits leaving the premises who told us the shop was in the process of closing and had refused to serve them.
We then spent several minutes searing for somewhere else before finding a shop which sold pizzas, as it turned out we were their last customers before they shut as well but at least we had a rest to take back to our motel room . Oweira is a seaside town on a beach and yet you can't get fish and chips there after eight thirty? Almost like Cornwall in the winter.
Almost as soon as we had eaten a huge wave of tiredness swept over us and we all went to bed .