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Would I want to live in Gisborne? Nah, too car-centric (protests against making Grey St less car-centric, which goes against everything I stand for; less cars please!). Resource-based economy with lots of logging trucks driving through town. Seems to be possible to know everyone.
Getting to Gisborne
There aren’t a lot of flights to Gisborne, but for now there are enough for us. We left on Thursday evening. (Total first world problem: the food in the Air NZ lounge was less tasty than one might hope. Sometimes it’s really good. Sometimes it’s OK. We won’t talk about the hash browns in the YVR Maple Leaf Lounge.) It was actually a super bumpy flight. MP characterizes it as the worst flight she’s ever been on. There was also, in the news, a flight from Dunedin to Christchurch that diverted to Nelson (Wellington too windy) that same night, and then there was insufficient accommodation overnight in Nelson for the passengers. There were complaints from the passengers, but the Air NZ staff stayed overnight with the passengers and really seem to have gone the extra mile.
OK, so we arrive in Gisborne at 8pm. (It has a noticeably high Māori population). Turns out that all of the taxis at the airport are pre-booked. I heard that they could come back in 15-20 minutes. Nothing is very far. But the weather in Gisborne is warm (high of 27 that day?) and it’s a fine day, so I talk MP into walking an hour to our holiday park, with a brilliant sunset. Some of the pedestrian infrastructure is quite middling, but a lot of it is also on small suburban streets, so less critical than on highways. (Also, there was an auntie waiting for her ride, who seemed to know everyone passing by. As did the security guard at the airport on our flight back to Wellington. You think Wellington is small, try Gisborne.)
Cycling Gisborne
The plan for the next day was to rent bicycles from Cycle Gisborne and bike to some wineries. (Turns out: the number of wineries we reached was 2). MP had called earlier in the week and been told that for the wineries trip, 10:30 was a good starting time; she made a reservation by just telling them her name (pretty casual!). We had a lot of breakfast at Flagship—too much really. Then we had an hour’s bike ride, through some outskirts and farms, out to Matawhero, where we had the chicken and duck parfait. There was also a Christmas party going on there. Another half hour took us to The Vines at Bushmere Estate, where we had quite good pepper squid. Food pictures at the end of the November report.
The ride along State Highways 2 and 35 isn’t awesome. But we managed to avoid highways after a while. It was a bit worse than back roads in Quebec that I’ve ridden on: more traffic, less shoulder.
After Bushmere, we then went and took the long way around. In fact, first back towards Matawhero, and then along an embankment along the Waipaoa River. The Cycle Gisborne staff had highlighted this on the map, and it’s kind of part of the Motu Trails, but Google didn’t suggest it. I did manage to use the Internet to find a description of this path, and it worked pretty well. At one point on the Waipaoa River there were heaps of paradise shelducks (odd, usually we just see 2 at a time) and what looked to be dabchicks but were actually grey ducks/mallards upon picture inspection.
The biking was marginally acceptable but the Great Rides in Queenstown, Rotorua, and Wellington were better, with almost all off-road riding on those, for instance.
I had reserved a car rental at Budget for 3:30. So, we had two rental bicycles and a rental car, 5km away from the bicycle rental place. It’s like the wolf, goat, and cabbage problem, but with less eating. An exercise for the reader: figure out the solution.
We had a surprisingly good dinner of kofta at Mediterranean kitchen & Grill, which has a pretty diverse menu for what is basically a takeout counter with tables (pasta, BBQ chicken, salads). It definitely had that grilled flavour.
After that, I was back at the holiday park and worked on my Mueller Hut pictures. This holiday park wasn’t our favourite. The room was fine (though I wish there were more rugs) but it was actually next to SH35, which was kind of noisy, and there were people talking loudly outside our room, though they weren’t noisy late. They were noisy before 7AM until MP told them to be quiet.
Stingrays
Dive Tatapouri runs a Reef Ecology tour with stingray petting. (With that name, you might think they provide other diving services, but there’s no mention of them on their webpage, though apparently easy diving is available in the area.) I signed up for that, which was at 12:10 for us; it depends on the tides. We went to the farmer’s market before that, but it was pretty small, and the best we could do on short notice for actual breakfast was the Kaiti Hub, where we got some actually pretty good lamb korma; unfortunately it took a while to prepare and we ended up eating it at Dive Tatapouri while waiting for the stingray tour (which was fortunately delayed a few minutes due to rain).
Apparently a few years ago the owner of Dive Tatapouri had noticed that stingrays came to visit him while he was out photographing and fishing, and he turned this into a business. There is a group of guides who can take groups out on the water. They have developed a rapport with some of the stingrays in the bay, who come by for snacks, petting, and minor mayhem like pushing the guides into holes. The stingrays are wild animals but also kind of like 200kg puppies, and the guides have named and can recognize some of the stingrays. We had two kinds of stingrays: I think it was the NZ long-tailed stingray and NZ eagle stingray.
I did not have an underwater camera nor a GoPro so photography was not ideal, alas.
After the stingrays, I had hoped to go to Cottles Cafe in Tolaga Bay. They were closed on the weekend. I don’t know why. Food was a pie from a store in Tolaga Bay.
We actually drove around somewhat ineffectively, first to the Cooks Cove walkway trailhead, then to the Tolaga Bay wharf (repaired but now again half-closed; but I saw some people on the closed part somehow), then to the village, then back to the trailhead, decided that we didn’t want to do this walk on a cloudy day, and then back through the village to the Ernest Reeve Walkway / Tatarahake Cliff Walk (80m elevation gain to a view of the bay).
We had another fancy meal at the Crawford Road Kitchen, associated with the Gisborne Wine Centre, where they centralize all of the wine selling from the region. Somehow, no wine on Sunday.
Cook’s Cove and Tairawhiti museum
Finally, before our 3:25pm flight out on Sunday, I thought we’d do some hiking.
Finding breakfast on Sunday morning was difficult and we had more pies. I had a Gear meat pie from Kaiti Hub, since the actual bakery was closed for Sunday. The meat was tender, but the pasty was not that flaky. Maybe it’s better from the HQ.
To get to the hike, sadly, we had to drive an hour back north to Tolaga Bay again, but it was worth it to get the better weather for the view of Cook’s Cove and also yet another rock with a hole in it (hi Percé!). Some people like recreational driving and would do the whole Pacific Coast Highway (which is on the East coast; take that, North America), but not us. The track is well-formed and there is a bit of elevation gain, but not too much. There is a monument pointing out the Cook landing site, though it’s easy to miss. There were a few other groups on the track, but not super busy on this first day of summer.
I’ve been starting to make a collection of Captain Cook statues and added the one in Gisborne to my collection. We had lunch in town and then, since our flight was delayed, I had enough time to check out the Tairawhiti museum for 30 minutes. There is enough there for at least an afternoon, including lots of local artifacts and art. The $5 admission is very reasonable.
Back at the airport, I dropped the car key in the slot and we waited for the flight back to Wellington.
