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We went for a walk on the beach path to watch the sunrise. It looked like it would be another beautiful day. There was a lot of timber on the shoreline. We had also noticed timber on the beaches as we approached Tirohanga yesterday.
Our road this morning took us to the most easterly part of New Zealand. Every piece of shoreline was littered with the remnants of trees. The drive involved a lot of steep and twisty roads by the ocean. We stopped for morning tea in Waiha Bay, in a campsite which was empty except for dogs and birds. It was very windy.
The scenery was incredible. We crossed wide rivers just before they entered the sea, the shoreline was quite rocky in places and the roads had no guard rails. Mostly there were just timber posts, with the occasional section which also had strips of timber between the posts. The only thing between the road and a drop of hundreds of feet. Have a look at the cover photo for this entry. That dark piece of vegetation you can see is the top of a tree which is growing below that cliff you (can't) see which is right there on the other side of that witch's hat.
Out on the horizon was Mount White, which is New Zealand's most active volcano. I was happy for it to be across all that distance of sea.
One of the noticeable thing about this area was the amount of corn being grown, right down to the sea. The corn was drying out, so I assume the grain was used for feed rather than to sell as vegies at the shops for human consumption.
We turned inland for a while, through a lot of forestry country, before reaching the sea again between Hick's Bay and Te Araroa. We went into this last town to see the largest pohutukawa tree in the world. It was very large.
Inland again, through more spectacular scenery. We next saw the sea again at Tokumaru Bay which has an historic wharf which provided some spectacular scenery today because there was a large swell and waves were breaking very close to the wharf.
Next town was Tolaga Bay and our stop for the night. There were no motorhomes in this camp either, just one caravan.
We walked out the Tolaga Bay wharf, which is the largest concrete all the way wharf in the southern hemisphere. What is great about walking all that way to the end of the 660m wharf, is that if you kept going you would just fall into the sea. There are no guard rails. Another thing to love about New Zealand!
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