Ohope Beach / Whakatane

Fourth time we come to this wonderful, fantastic, beautiful, quiet, relaxed, marvelous, paradisical spot. Probably fair to say that this is our favorite place in NZ. I've written about Ohope so many times, so I won't repeat myself. 11km of wonderful, almost empty, sandy beach. Nice surf. Great food. Lovely ice cream. Berry orchards. Macadamia orchards. Running along the beach. Surfing. Body Boarding. Chilling out. Ice cream. Ice cream. Ice cream. And some nice walking tracks. And very friendly people. And no bus crowds. That is probably the thing that still surprises me, in a positive way. Apparently, Whakatane/Ohope is just far enough off the beaten track so that the big tour buses don't come here. Bliss! Of course, we paid many, many visits to our favorite berry and ice cream dealer, The Blueberry Corner. :-) And we stayed at Surfs Reach Motel again, which was every bit as nice and welcoming and perfectly situated right on the beach as two years ago. The ice cream at The Quay was also very nice. The weather wasn't too great, lots of rain, but since it was still very warm, we nevertheless enjoyed the beach and I was able to catch some nice waves today, too.

On Saturday, we went to see a local movie, "Broken", at the local cinema. This cinema is fucking great! You can get fucking Belgian waffels with chocolate souce, strawberries, ice cream, and cream and take it into the cinema! And real fruit ice cream too! This is paradise! :-D "Broken" was interesting, only two things to criticise: a) not enough violence, I had hoped for more reading the description, and b) too much Church/Christian bullshit at the end. Instead of fucking R or X ratings for "foul language" or "violence" they should have a rating and warning for religious bullshit content. Well, whatever, still enjoyable.

Tomorrow, we're off to Piha Beach for our last night in NZ before flying to Singapore on Wednesday. There might be a few ice creams waiting for me on the road. :-)




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gandalf the Pedophile

Driving down south to Kerikeri was beautiful: we took the time to take the scenic coastal route, visiting gazillions of beautiful beaches and inlets. Bliss and joy. KK itself is very nice of course as well, real fruit icecream, need I say more. On a rainy Saturday afternoon we went to Ngawha hot springs, which rocks totally. Basic, ramshackle pools, or rather woodclad holes in the ground with different temperatures between very hot and scorching, after one hour you have a baby's skin again. Amazing. We stayed at the very nice and highly recommendable Kerikeri Farmhostel and the reisebegleitung greatly enjoyed the Kunekune pigs they keep. Before Xmas crazyness took over the whole place we left for Whangarei Heads and that's where the old pedowizard comes in. But more of that tomorrow, I have to and eat one of the best breakfasts of all times now. Just remember: always stay with your arse to the wall when meeting old man with grey beards and pointy hats.
Read more

Rain!

But warm. And not real rain. Just a drizzle. It's gonna clear up any minute. ANY MINUTE. I'm sure. Everybody's sure of that. Has been sure for the past three days. The only thing I'm sure of is that it will indeed clean up after we've left tomorrow and that the clouds will follow me to Napier. Because they too love me. I'm a raingod after all. Since I'm so incredibly butch and such a great manly bloke I did not let the rain keep me from exploring the mountain. Didn't go up to the top because that would have been stupid. The forest is truly amazing! Brings out all the hippie genes in me. But only for a millisecond. Gotta finish up now, have to clean my rifle and go rabbit and possum hunting. Kill a couple of God's creatures, just for fun.
Read more

Hawai'i, a résumé

Well, well, well. Looking back with a couple of days distance I must say that Hawai'i was underwhelming. It was nice, no doubt about that, bur I certainly won't be going there again and I think there are better places with less hassle and rules and regulations in the world. But anyway, let's try to wrap it up in a post. Flying into Hilo is niiiiice. On a clear day. You get beautiful views of valleys, forests, waterfalls, kinda like a very short scenic flight (provided you have a window seat on the right side of the plane). Domestic flights in HI are relatively easy going: our baggage arrived always very quickly and the car rental companies are just across the exit door from baggage claim. I had pre-booked our cars through NKT Travel and everything worked perfect - we got a good price, good, reliable car, no worries at all, so I can definitely recommend them. You don't really need a 4WD (unless you have a very specific use case planned). We rented a "mid-size...
Read more