Kerikeri (Day of Pies)

Saturday brought our first day trip in the car. Using the free New Zealand road maps on my old Garmin 276C we keyed in a route to Kerikeri. We detoured early on to visit a hardware store where I hoped (and succeeded) to get a shaft extension for my drill so I could complete the A/C plumbing project.

The directions from the Garmin soon took us up a rough track. It may have thought it was the quickest route and perhaps it was considering the speed limit of 100km/h as attainable. But a rough track winding road on the side of a mountain was not drivable at anywhere near that speed. We got some lovely views and a dirty car.

We first stopped off at the Kerikeri Basin Recreation Reserve so that we could walk the river, see the falls and visit the stone store nearby. The whole area was incredibly picturesque. One can see why New Zealand was chosen to film the Lord of the Rings. The area felt like “The Shire”. The weather made it perfect.

The walk to see the river and falls was about an hour each way. The signs said it would be an hour and it was. Unlike the USA where we normally have to halve the posted hiking times. The first stop was an old generating station set up to encourage retired overseas civil servants to retire in the area.

Next was the Wharepuke Falls which were pretty but we didn’t linger as we wanted to press on and make it back to Kerikeri for lunch – our minds had been set on the pie shop.

The path continued on for a good distance before coming upon the more impressive Rainbow Falls which we were able to view from the bottom as well as the top.

We didn’t linger long as the pies beckoned. We made our way back to the car park but before leaving we crossed the footbridge to look around the stone buildings there which were one of the first built in the area by the European settlers.

Finally we visited the town of Kerikeri and after walking around and asking directions we found the pie shop. It was now 1pm and although the pies were pretty good, they seemed to have been in the heater for a little too long so it didn’t meet the expectations that had been set by others who had visited before us.

After lunch we visited a couple of stores before heading back by way of Paihia and a third set of falls – the Haruru Falls. Rather than show another picture of falls, the last pic on this page is of our new car. With dirty tires.

Back at the boat we rested for the remainder of the afternoon before eating dinner – more pies. We finished the day watching a movie.

This morning I completed the drilling and plumbing to provide drains for our stern A/Cs as well as an air vent on our cabin’s A/Cs water pump. Helen gave the outside of the boat another rinse and we all had showers as this was our last morning on the dock. Just before midday we threw the lines and left the berth behind anchoring a short distance away in the anchorage. It’s quite pleasant out here and less noisy so it’s a nice change of scene. We’ve had lunch and I’ll let you guess what we had.