I found the fishing tough going this time round as the water was so warm a lot of the fish were down deep in the cooler waters so fly fishing the edges was proving unsuccessful. Mick came out for the day on saturday and we jumped into the kayaks and spent 3 or4 hours fly casting with zero results. Then the rain came in and it bucketed down for the rest of the day. Ken and Vicki arrived for the day on sunday and they brought Joe {Dad} out as well. When Joe had his camper van he came to Rerewhakaitu many times with mum to do a bit of fishing. So it was good to reminisce on those good times shared.
Margo and John also arrived bringing the boat with them and they tried jigging out in the middle and straight away caught fish. I had seen a few dead fish around and the ones we eventually caught didn't seem to have much energy, and the ones we released took awhile to recover. So I think the warm water temperatures were having a serious effect on the trout in the lake.
Anyway we had a great time with John and Margot and the rain started to come in the next day so we packed up and headed to Tauranga for a couple of days then we hit the road for Auckland. Anyone who knows me will think I would be a bit tense heading into Auckland traffic with the rig on and they would be right. But I must say we both kept our cool and arrived at Hendersons Tui Glenn park at the NZMCA park with our sanity reasonably intact.
That evening we went to son Dane and Lori's place. Dane had just taken delivery of his new boat,a bow rider Bayliner. He's keen to get it set up how he wants it and will be using it for wake boarding and diving and fishing eh Lori. We had a great evening as Lori's parents and the flatmates were there as well and Dane cooked up an awesome BBQ with salads to match.
Next night we were off to Jocelyns sister Joans place and were meeting Dane and lori there as well. Also Marie and Rob and Ben so it was turning out a great family catch up. Joan cooked us a beautiful roast of beef and another lovely evening was had by us all.
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| Kerikeri. |
The next day we left early, about 5.30am to beat the traffic and made our way north to Kerikeri and we unhitched at the NZMCA site there. It was good to be out of the madness that was Auckland traffic and I started to relax straight away. We checked out some of the touristy things around Kerikeri and did a drive to Paihia which was packed with tourists enjoying the sun of the Bay Of Islands. Kerikeri seems a nice small town. So neat and tidy with a lovely climate. The real estate prices don't appear to be over the top.
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| Beautiful Maitai Bay. |
On the friday we hitched up again and headed further north to the Karikari peninsula and made our way down to the sea at Maitai bay. We were to set up here for the next ten days or so as Ken and Vicki were coming to join us for their annual holidays. The beaches here were stunning with white sands and lovely warm water. We ended up spending a lot of time in the water either swimming or snorkelling.
We had a bit of weather coming so we decided to go for a drive up 90 mile beach and on up to Cape Reinga. The tide was out so we had a wide expanse of beach to travel on. It was amazing to find tuatuas all along the whole length of the beach. We stopped and gathered quite a few with which we ended up making tuatau fritters for dinner that night. We all remarked on how nice they were. Anyway we reached the bluffs quite away along the beach and got out for a walk. We noticed a couple of surf casters on the rocks at one end so went for a look and they had about 5 nice snapper and 2 big trevally. Very impressive. We carried on and saw the boogie boarders sliding down the huge sand dunes. We were all too lazy to climb up the sand dunes to give it a go but it looked like they were having fun although it seemed sand could get into places that sand wasn't meant to go,as a number of them were in the stream trying to rid themselves of it.
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| 90 mile beach. |
We exited the beach via the Te Paki stream and carried on north to Cape Reinga. It was a strange sensation as we approached the cape with the feeling that we were running out of New Zealand. It was a popular destination as there were a lot of tourists from a number of countries around the world. The walk down to the lighthouse was great as you could look out and see where the Tasman sea met the Pacific Ocean with waves approaching from opposite directions then standing on end as they met. The visibility wasn't great on this day as we couldn't see the Three Kings islands but the views were still amazing. The last time I had been here I was 15 years old when my brother Ken and I and a mate had travelled north from Thames on a long weekend to check out Cape Reinga.
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| Cape Reinga. |
We were staying in touch with Katy whom we met on the west coast of the south island and it turned out she had picked up another bike in Auckland and was heading north to bike to Cape Reinga. So we were very pleased to catch up again. She only had 6 more days in the country and she was flying home to Canada. She had loved her time in NZ and was sad to be leaving but looking forward to catching up with family and friends again back home.
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| Jocelyn and Katie. |
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| Nice snapper for dinner. |
Unfortunately it was the next day we got out in Kens little boat and caught some nice snapper So we couldn't give Katy any fresh fish on the BBQ. We didn't have to go far to catch fish. I was using soft baits and Ken was stray lining and we both got good fish.
We decided to pack up and head down to Matauri Bay for a few days before Ken and Vicki head back to work. Again another beautiful place. Unfortunately the easterly arrived about the same time that we did and that is the one wind direction you don't want at Matauri. But the sun was still shining and we picked a nice spot looking out to sea and set up the camp. So we are sitting around continuing to enjoy our New Zealand summer.
