It was a cold night just out of Rotaura. We decided that we should go back to the warmth around the coast. We headed back up hwy 2 to meet the pacific coast hwy and it's first large town Whakatane (Fack-a-tawne.) At the I site a very helpful old man told us we should drive along the coast because it was beautiful, but we could also get to Gisborne by cutting through a gorge. At this point we were thinking the gorge would be the way to go. We have been driving along the coast for awhile now and thought a change of scenery would be nice. Still we would not make Gisborne tonight, as we don't need to rush and we would like to avoid driving these crazy roads at night! At Opotiki just out side of town about 30min is a DOC campsite for free. The site is called Boulders. The directions are simple turn off hwy 2 and follow road take a left at the river conversion (I don't know what that means?) then you will see a sign. We can do that. The first part of the drive is a nice paved road through some farm land. The road turns into gravel still well maintained. Then we see signs all around that we are on private Mauri land. I'm sarting to think I might have to resign as a navigator when we finally see a sign that say's DOC and Backpakers Haven camping to the right, but the directions say take a left. We decide to follow the signs to the right, to the left was a lot of barbwire fence and a not so welcoming looking farm house. We start on this crazy road. I know the road going up the peninsula was intense, but this road made Paul sweat. Our little van just fit on it, on the left, my side there was a cliff of course that dropped to a river. On Paul's side was steep mountain with jungle plants. We were going slow because the road was an s shape the entire way with ups and downs. It got scary when there would be a wash out and the road got smaller. Or when we drove over a fresh plowed landslip, I held my breath and I think Paul might have held his at some points. There was no way to drive out backwards and no way to turn around so we were committed. After crossing 3 streams that had a steady flow and some height we came to a fork in the road. The fork went up to the right and down to the left. The left was the DOC campground and the right was Backpakers Haven. The drive down to DOC was very steep and had parts of loose gravel around turns that would dump us in the river if the gravel threw us a bit. We parked up top and walked dow to asses the situation. At the end of the steepness was a concrete shelf that just dropped off. Our low riding van would never clear this. So we kept driving to backpackers haven. This place was beautiful the jungle opened up, and they had a level area by the river, and they had showers! Virginia the owner said she would have to talk to her husband John to see if they could put us anywhere. There was a wedding happening and they rented it out for the whole weekend.
John broke the news that we could not stay. He was very nice and told us to go stay at the DOC just up the road. I told him we did not think our van could make it down let alone back up the hill. He said well lets have a look. After inspecting our van he said we should have no problems. In the morning if we did get stuck just walk back up the road and he would give us a tow. He said he has rescued quite a few cars in the last few weeks, while he gets annoyed with it, he felt bad we could not stay at his place and he appreciated that we did not try it since we do not have 4 wheel drive. As we were leaving he stopped us and said he was going into town and he would follow us down to the campground and back up so we could have some piece of mind. How nice! For those of you who have seen The man from snowy river, John looked just like the blonde tracker who comes to help look for Jessica and tells the main character the was sorry to hear about his dad, they were mates. John also has mountain horses, or brumbies that roam around. We found this our because we almost hiked to a hut on his land but they water crossing was still very high this time of year. Anyway our van made it down and up so we felt good about staying there.
We were surprised when we saw another car down there! We thought they were weird because the parked right in the middle of the driveway and right in the middle of a mud puddle and set up camp there. We went on dry land higher up from the river. They looked like 3 young men. While Paul and I were making our mac and cheese for dinner one of these young men came to our camp site and said hello. They were from Germany and were 19 years old. They spoke English very well, although the quite one spoke it the best and when the other two could not find a word they asked the quite one and he always had the answer. We had a great time talking to them, we talked about a lot of stuff from jobs, school, healthcare, government, movies, ect. One of the boys is going to school to be a carpenter, he got his text book to show Paul what he would be building, and that the wood work he is learning does not use nails, but is cut perfectly to fit like a puzzle. The quite boy said he likes English and Spanish and would like to do something with languages, and the third boy did not know what he wanted to do. We finally had to tell them we were going to bed. I think they would have stayed up all night talking to us. They liked practicing their english and bonding with Paul about driving on the "wrong side of the road" and how just like Paul every time they go to use the blinker they turn on the windshield wiper. They were so sweet we told them that we would cook them breakfast in the morning.
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