Hawke's Bay

After a long break in our journey and moving the blog to a different platform, we now want to share more or less current events with you. Even though some travel reports are from a while back, I still want to publish them and hope to catch up on the last 2 months quickly ;)

After leaving the East Cape and continuing along the east coast, we arrived in Gisborne fairly quickly. Originally, we planned to stay here a bit longer, but the city didn't seem inviting to us at all, and when the campground of our choice was fully booked, we spontaneously decided to drive directly to Napier in Hawke's Bay. Even though we had already planned to look for work in this region at that time, we did not know how long we would actually stay here or that we would find something like a home here.

Upon arrival in Napier, we first aimed for a centrally located freedom camping site in the city (about a 20-minute walk to the center) and right by the sea. Even though it was just a parking lot with a toilet and some quite eccentric long-term residents, it was a good starting point for us to explore the area and look for jobs. We dedicated the next three days to this goal, which meant calling up all sorts of orchards and wineries and asking about job opportunities. However, after just one day, I had enough, because either the people we contacted were not looking for help or they told us that the apple season would only start in two weeks. But we didn't give up hope and continued trying, even going to see those who didn't sound too dismissive and handed them our resumes. However, as nothing could be found quickly, we spent our time at the parking lot, once again met Simon and Marco, watched the long-term residents deal drugs, and eventually decided to drive out of the city and into the 'wilderness' for 2-3 days to do some hiking. However, we first needed to take a shower, so we drove to a proper campground in a suburb called Clive. It would later turn out that this would be our home for the next 2 months.

After a refreshing shower, we headed inland to the Kaweka Forest Park. Here, we wanted to visit the Mangatutu Hot Springs, for which we accepted a 3-hour drive through the hinterland. However, shortly before reaching our destination, a river with flooding blocked our path. Since there was no other road that could have taken us to our destination, our trip came to an abrupt end, and we had to drive the entire way back! Slightly annoyed, we bought a bottle of wine and 2 steaks in Napier and tried to forget about the day as quickly as possible.

However, the following day we tried our luck again and attempted to enter the park from a different side, and this time we succeeded. The campground we found here was once again a typical DOC site (operated by the Department of Conservation), which usually means no drinking water and only pit toilets. The next day, we finally wanted to go hiking and first set out to explore the Kaweka Lakes. However, after just one hour, we realized that this wasn't going to take long, so we decided to do a slightly longer hike that was supposed to last 2-3 hours according to the brochure. After a nerve-wracking river crossing (which some people didn't like at all) and several hours of uphill climbing, we had to realize that we wouldn't be able to complete the track before dark and turned back at less than halfway. Completely exhausted, we arrived back at our car in the early evening and were looking forward to dinner and a shower in the river.

Since our drinking water was running low and I felt a cold coming on, we drove back to civilization the next day. This turned out to be very fortunate, because the day after, we received the long-awaited call: We finally had work!