Plenty to sea

I left Dargaville about 9.30 and headed south through Brynderwyn to Wellsford. The land was a lot flatter than what I’d experienced yesterday, although to be honest I couldn’t see the last 50kms so that could have been flat as well. There were of course more hills on the way but the road didn’t go anywhere near as close to the beach. There were some spectacular views down to the river and the sea. It was again overcast and drizzling with rain from time to time.

When the countryside did get hilly it was more rolling hills rather than the jagged peaks for the north.

It took about ¾ hour to come across the first road works today and shortly after that I completed the loop rejoining the main north road that I’d travel up on Monday. I left it again at Wellsford again heading East on the Twin Coast road. This passed through Helensville to Kumeu and then headed east again. I must have taken the wrong turn as I finished up doing a loop through some farmland and decided to got back to the town and head straight to Auckland. This was through wine country, a bit of a change from the forests and farmland from earlier on. Even then I missed a turn off in the suburbs and went east to the main motorway before getting into the city.

I pulled off in Manukau to do a bit of shopping and then headed south towards Hamilton, hoping I’d get the right turn to Tauranga and not finish up back there. Eventually it came up and for about 80km the roads were mostly flat and the speed went up accordingly. At the end of the pain I drove through a gorge, which lived up to its name – it was gorgeous. The road ran between a sheer cliff on the left and a river on the right. I even pulled off a side road to see another waterfall.

Eventually I past through the hills and again saw the sea – The Bay of Plenty. I also saw the sun for the first time for a few days.

After a couple of tries I found an Internet place in a backpackers and booked ahead for a motel for the night, arriving about 30minutes later.

Tauranga is a beach town/city that was one of the unsuccessful nominations for our free day last Friday. The town has a number of deep bays and is a port. The entrance is dominated by a large mound call Mt Maunganui. It was nearly sunset when I got to it there are 2 sweeping beaches – one on the port side and the other pon the open sea where there were quite a few people surfing. That beach had a number of rocky islands in it as well. The mount itself is quite steep but that didn’t stop the sheep that were grazing on its side. I did a brief drive through the shopping/restaurant area and then headed back to the motel.