Waikinae Not Find A Place To Sleep?

Another day, another morning waking up to daylight streaming through the various cracks in the curtains. I’ve never been a morning person and we have been getting up at about half 7 every day so far on this leg of the trip, it’s like working 7 days a week! I let us sleep in til about 8:00 that morning (James can’t really get up before me as I have to deconstruct my bed before we can do anything) in the knowledge that we needed to be out of the campsite by 10:00 anyway, and we always faffed about getting the water filled up and emptying the waste tank and everything. There wasn’t much on the agenda for the day either really. James had spotted a shipwreck on the map so was keen for us to head over to the shore and see if we could find it. Off we went, to Waitarere Beach on the west coast, not too far away to give us a nice gentle start to the day. We parked up right next to the beach and headed down to find the Hyderabad wreck. The tide seemed to be in and we realised that we had little chance of seeing it. Even the woman who gave us directions didn’t think we would have a hope in hell, but we set off anyway, knowing what us Gray’s are like.

It was supposedly a twenty minute walk to the wreck and it was a nice day so we lapped it up. We scanned the coastline for the great hulking wreck that we assumed the Hyderabad would look like, and off in the distance we saw a wooden structure just at the waters edge. We hurried along the beach to get a closer look. When we did get a closer look it turned out to be a tree. There were loads of them washed up along the shore, almost like a scene from Lord Of The Rings (come on, almost two weeks and I haven’t mentioned it once!). James was determined to find the shipwreck and we carried on along the shoreline until we saw a tall blue marker post in the distance. Sure enough it had “Hyderabad Wreck” printed on it, but there was absolutely no sign of said wreck. Disappointed we headed back to the campervan for lunch.

Southport beach again??

We were making our way down Highway 1 towards Wellington, where we would be catching the ferry to the South Island. Along the way we passed a beautiful cove and stopped off for a stroll. That is the beauty of this part of our trip, we have the luxury to be able to stop off as and when we see something from the road. This time it was a rocky beach with fantastic cliffs surrounding it, next time it could be a snow-topped mountain, or a crater with hot springs within. Probably the high point of that visit was I got James to throw a rock into the water with a high arc so that I could try and hit it with another rock, clay-pigeon shooting style. He said it couldn’t be done, but on the third attempt I smashed it dead on. Yes, I know, not much happened on this day and I am trying to pad it out a bit.

The boys on the beach

After Waikinae Beach we headed into the Hutt Valley (nothing to do with Star Wars mind) and drove to our designated free-camping spot. It wasn’t a good one. So we had to come all the way back down from the hills and try again. The next spot was no good either, but at least we had filled up on petrol, and a new record too - $112 for a full tank. Our second spot outside Lower Hutt was also no good, so we hit the Coast Road in one last effort to find a place to set up camp. We found a DOC (Department Of Conservation) campsite that had hot showers and a few basic facilities. It was $10 each to stay and the payment system was based on trust – put your details on a piece of paper and put it in a plastic envelope (with your money) in the locked metal box. Nobody else was there so we toyed with the idea of not paying, or only paying for one person, but then we realised that karma can be a cruel mistress and given our recent misgivings with the netbook we shouldn’t be going for double-or-quits.