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Published: February 20th 2010
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Our departure from Wellington was not quite as early as we had hoped, as we have collected so much stuff in the 9 months that we lived there! We ended up piling everything into boxes and chucking them into the car, to later discover that we had about 40 knives and forks, 2 sieves, yet no saucepans or bowls!
We finally hit the road at around 6 in the evening for our journey up to Hastings. We had arranged to stay with a couple who lived in a small cottage in the middle of the hills, who we had met through a website called couchsurfing. This is basically an online travellers network of people with spare rooms/couches open to travellers. We had heard that it was a really great way to meet the locals and get off the beaten track, so we decided to give it a go. So anyway, we had been told that their road was somewhere of SH50 (a 70km stretch of road), so had a fun time checking and double checking each side road in the dark. We finally arrived just before 11 and went straight to bed.
We met our hosts Daniel, Emily and
baby Ralph in the morning, they were really lovely and have such a cute way of life. Their nearest shop is 50kms away, and their neighbours are a shearing shed and a windmill. They are both beekeepers and we learnt some really interesting things about the structure of beehives, and the roles of each type of bee in the hive. We also visited Arataki Honey, a small museum about honey making.
Whilst staying with Daniel and Emily we went on a trip to Napier, a 45 minute drive from their house. While there we visited an old prison that closed in 1993. It was much smaller than we were expecting, and it would appear that security levels were not high, as many of the prisoners dug passages out of their cells. They used to go down into town for the night, then come back to their cell in time for roll call in the morning! One prisoner even had a home-made copy of the front gate key! The prison has now been made into a hostel for backpackers, which would be a pretty unique place to stay.
After saying goodbye to our lovely hosts we got on the
road up to Gisborne. Due to all the heavy rain we had experienced in the last few days some of the main highways were closed, but thankfully ours was still open. It was a pretty scary drive through as there had been so many landslides onto the road, one big one we saw covered over half the road.
We arrived in Gisborne and after a much needed Subway sandwich headed off to our camping ground. We unpacked our brand-new, never tested tent, followed the instructions to put it up, then retired to bed before the rain began. Luckily even though our tent was mostly single layered, it passed the waterproof test.
We spent three nights in Gisborne looking around the town and checking out the beaches, but the most awesome activity that we did was wild stingray feeding. We walked across the reef at low tide, and fed herrings and kingfish with bait to attract the stingrays to the area. Once a stingray was sighted our guides used bait on the end of a bamboo pole to lead them up to us, where we hand fed them. It was so amazing as they sucked the food from our
hands, and we could stroke them after. We saw 3 stingrays and 2 eagle rays all together, and Dan fed a pregnant eagle ray! We think this has been one of the most unique and enjoyable things we have done.
We're heading up to the Bay of Plenty now for a few days, and we will update you all soon.
Love
Dan & Julia xxx
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Melissa Megan Gilbert and Grand-dad
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Hi Julia and Dan! Looks like you are having a wonderful time, Thanks for the photographs they have realy brightend up my day! How did you manage to feed stingrays?! I thought they were dangerous. You say you have had alot of rain over there but, Here we are having lots of snow for once It looks like a Winterwonderland. Me and Aaron and Grand-dad have just been making a snow man! He is a giant! Your camping looked fun is it comfy? Rember how I said I was having lessons at Amadeus in Longton with my teacher. Well she is pregnant now so, I have to have lessons with another teacher I don't know what she is like yet but, I will find out on Thursday 4th March.I hope she is nice her name is Joanne. I am doing a solo concert on 10th March I will be playing The Entertainer.We all still miss you lots and hope to see you soon. Love Melissa Megan Gilbert, and Grand-dad Tams.