Labour Weekend = 3 day trip to Hawkes Bay!

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For Labour Weekend we made the most of the extra day off by going somewhere a bit further away – Hawkes Bay, on the south east coast (North Island). There were five of us – my roommate Tim (French), his colleague Jamie (Kiwi) who grew up there, Guillermo (Spanish) and Simon (Swiss), so a big mix of people.

We managed to leave work a bit earlier, but the majority of Auckland seemed to be going away as it was the first public holiday for six months so we got caught in a lot of heavy traffic leaving the city. Think the total journey time was over 7 hours in the end, but we got there with enough time to have a few drinks and go to a couple of bars.

As Jamie/his family knew the area pretty well, he took us to some more less known spots. On the Saturday we drove to a beach (can’t remember the name!) and hiked around over the rocks/hills and had lunch on massive deserted flat rock by the sea. On the way back, stopped at a reserve and checked out a couple of waterfalls.

We’d only booked accommodation for the first night, being unsure of the plans for the next day, but Jamie’s Mum and step Dad offered to put us up for the next two nights which was really nice of them! In the evening we offered to cook dinner after coming up with the idea of everyone bringing a dish from their own country. Well sort of......... Guillermo cooked a Spanish Omelette; Simon didn’t bring Swiss chocolate unfortunately! So he ended doing a Greek salad. Tim bought a bottle of French wine, Jamie’s family cooked roast lamb and I did an English breakfast in the morning. We had a few drinks at Jamie’s with his parents and played their card game which was invented within the family and passed down generations (his Mum was very proud of it!)

On the Sunday we drove right out into the bush (no idea where!). The roads were so bad and I’m surprised our tiny rent-a-car made it, considering half of the drive was off road and 9/10 cars we saw there were 4x4s. So after a couple of hours drive and some amazing views, we arrived at the Mangatainoki Hot Springs, which were pretty much as hot as a bath. After, we trekked down further to a river at the bottom of a massive canyon/gorge. Being at the bottom, you could really feel the immense size of it when looking back up at the top. The water from the river starts from the mountains so it was very cold. Despite this, we all had a swim across (and avoided being swept downstream!).

In the evening Guillermo made sangria and we just chilled out at Jamie’s house as everyone was pretty exhausted after the busy weekend. Had great weather over the three days – sunny and 20C.

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