14/07/2018 - Weekend trip to Mahia Peninsula

There have been much nicer places to stay overnight than the public parking lot in the city center of Wairoa. - Although nobody besieged our car or knocked on the window, we did not feel particularly comfortable at this place. "Freedom Camping" is not approved by all New Zealanders. Rightly so - tourists often take advantage of the offer and leave the sleeping place dirty in the morning. The communities are left with the disposal costs and understandably this causes resentment.

When the surrounding shops opened their doors, the activity in the parking lot increased significantly. That's why we quickly shook out our bed and drove around the four corners - to the immediate vicinity of New Zealand's only inland lighthouse. For over 80 years, the lighthouse faithfully served on "Portland Island", a small island off New Zealand's west coast, until it found its way to Wairoa in 1961. After seeing its light shine over us last night, it now formed the view during our breakfast. After that, we planned to upload a new blog. But Friday the 13th thwarted our plans. The website of our blog provider was down. So we prepared the new post as much as possible and left it at that. Before we continued to a new region, we visited the traditional bakery in Wairoa. Since 1905, everything the New Zealand heart desires has been produced here by hand. That's why we were not surprised by the crowd in the rather simple bakery. For lunch, Tobi got an award-winning pie and I got a freshly grilled panini with bacon, egg, tomato, and cheese. - We were both very happy with the selection and highly recommend a visit to "Oslers Bakery". ;)
Now we continued our journey to "Mahia Peninsula", which we reached early in the afternoon.

The small peninsula was originally a complete island, gradually connecting to New Zealand's North Island through a sandbar.

From the beginning, we were fascinated by the green meadows, the tall cliffs, and the long sandy beach. But we postponed the detailed exploration of the area to the next day. The last hikes we had taken in the "Te Urewera National Park" were still clearly noticeable in our legs.

The night was unusually mild - the temperature never dropped below double digits. On Saturday morning, the sun greeted us and after a hearty outdoor breakfast, we started the day motivated. And since our legs seemed only half as heavy, we started with a steep but short hike. From the campsite, we could already see the peak of "Mokotahi Hill". The climb to the summit turned into a slippery challenge. Because the majority of the trail was covered in mud and puddles, we had several difficulties maintaining our balance. But once you reach the top, you have a good overview of the peninsula, the city of Mahia, and the surrounding bays. After descending, we embarked on a long search for another hike. Unfortunately, we couldn't find its starting point. We suspect that the trail is no longer accessible and is now on private property. There were many of these on the small peninsula. For this reason, we continued to explore accessible areas. We ended up at various coastal areas, where there were countless shells and smaller crabs. The sun was shining all day, hardly a cloud could be seen in the sky. We enjoyed being able to be outside in the fresh air at around 16°C and ended the first spring-like day with a portion of rice pudding with apple sauce.