Bay of Islands Day Two

Today we slept in late (about 7:30). I got up and got us flat whites and fresh rolls from the bakery down the block. We took them upstairs to the kitchen/veranda, toasted the rolls and ate them with peanut butter and marmalade.

Two young German women asked Miriam if they could have a ride North with us. We welcomed them and left for Cape Reinga (the Northernmost tip of NZ) about 10:30 am.

This part of NZ is quite lovely. There are farm and sheep stations (ranches), and the grass this time of year is an extraordinarily vivid green. It reminds us of how lucky we are to live in the Pacific NW. The scenery here is full of tropical plants that we would never see at home, but that are not different in kind from what we see at home. To make us feel completely at home, it rained on us several times, we passed by a number of clear cuts, and we had to be very careful of the logging trucks barreling down the narrow roads.

The trip to the cape took over two hours and the last part was on gravel roads. It was worth the time and effort. The Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet at the cape, where there is a lighthouse, surrounded on both sides by steep cliffs, with surfy, sandy beaches in the distance.

We drove back part way and dropped the two women at their backpackers at Ngataki. The road to where they were staying was graveled, and did not look auspicious. After about 15 minutes, however, we got to a building in the middle of nowhere that looked like a small church or a convent. It was their backpackers. They were very grateful for the lift and wanted to pay us or do something for us. I told them to “pay it forward.”

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and at 2:30 pm when we left the young women the hunger demon struck Miriam really hard. We decided to stop at the next place, regardless. It turned out to be a tavern at Houhou, which was fun. The tavern was right on the bay, had high ceilings and a big indoor room, as well as a big veranda. Only three customers were there, out on the veranda drinking beer. I couldn’t hear what they were saying clearly, but I infer from what I did hear that “shooting the bull” is an international tradition.

We ordered “steak burgers” which were quite good, and flat whites. While we ate we looked at the stuff on the tavern walls. There were a number of pictures of a 1350 Kg great white shark that was caught nearby, mostly toothy mouth views with lots of blood. There were trophies for the heaviest duck brace shot in a year, and advertisements for fishing contests. There was a smaller picture of the result of a freak storm that blew scallops onto the beach. The scallop shells appeared to be 8 to 12 inches long, and there were thousands of them on the beach. And finally, we noticed three warnings printed on large, bluish paper. All threatened a 24 month ban from the tavern. One was for brawling, one was for excessively drunken behavior, and one was for being rude to the service staff.

Houhou is a very small community a long way from anywhere. I suspect there isn’t much to do here except fish, hunt and drink, and that these warnings were written of necessity, and that bans have been imposed with some frequency.

We got back to Paihia about 6:30 pm and went to the grocery store. Just inside the door was a large Plexiglas container full of live, green-lipped mussels. They were $1.00 a Kg (really cheap). I picked out about a dozen, Miriam got some pastrami, avocados and crackers, and we went back to Cap’n Bob’s.

I steamed the mussels with a bit of salt and garlic. Miriam nobly ate one, I shared one with a German backpacker who was curious, and happily consumed the rest.

I washed up dishes while Miriam went down to check emails and get the laundry ready. She did laundry, I blogged, and we went to bed.