Gisborne - Oct 22 to 25, 2010

For the long weekend we made our way out to the East Coast of New Zealand with a couple friends to check out the Gisborne Food and Wine Festival. The festival only runs for 1 day, so we figured it'd be a great opportunity to visit a new area of the country. We left Friday after work and drove as far as Tauranga (about 3 hours away). On the way in we stopped for a picture in Paeroa for a picture with the giant L&P bottle (you may remember from the Wellington Post). We didn't get up to too much when we arrived, just went out for dinner.

The next morning the sun was shining! The hostel we stayed at was right in the harbour and had a great rooftop patio for breakfast. Right below us there was a Waka Taua (Maori war canoe) competition. Teams were navigating through an obstacle course and performing various maneuvers. It was pretty impressive how nimble they made the large boat look.




After that we drove a few minutes north to the beach at Mount Maunganui. We started the day off by walking up Mount Mauao. Not sure where the name comes from, I thought it would have been called Mount Maunganui... The view from the top was incredible!







We spent the rest of the day winding along the coast, slowly making our way around the East Cape. I figure no one has a clue what that means, so here's a map of our route for the weekend.

A = Auckland
B = Tauranga
C = East Cape Lighthouse (as close as google could get - no paved road)
D = Gisborne


In Te Puke we had to stop at Kiwi360 for a picture with the Giant Kiwi. It's a kiwi-picking farm where you can go on a tour and pick your own kiwifruit. We didn't have time to take in the tour, maybe another time, but we sampled some fresh kiwi. Delicious!


We couldn't get over how isolated the East Cape is. The land is predominately, if not entirely Maori. There are miles and miles of beautiful coast and nothing has been spoiled by development. Quite often the beachfront property is being used as farmland. The cattle must have the best view in the world!








After many hours of driving (Thanks Jason!!) We finally made it to the East Cape lighthouse. This is the Eastern-most point of New Zealand and therefore sees the sun the earliest in the world! I am ignoring the pacific islands. They don't count, haha. We didn't realize that there was a hike involved once we got to the lighthouse. It was getting late by the time we arrived and couldn't be bothered to hike up the hill, so we just took pictures from the bottom.







Sunday morning we were off to the festival. When we entered the festival grounds (Grey's Bush), we were given a wine glass on a string. It had 2 markings on it, Taste and Glass. Surrounding the festival grounds were booths setup from all the major wine vineyards in the Gisborne area. You could purchase samples or glasses from each of them. We were pretty disappointed in having to pay so much. The $50 admission didn't get you anything. You still had to pay $5 for a small glass of wine from each booth. It was so hot out an ice cold beer would have been much more refreshing! Either way, we couldn't have asked for better weather. The sun was shining the entire day and a kiwi band, the Black Seeds did a great job headlining the concert.






Walking back to the hotel on the train bridge after the show:



On Monday, we explored a bit of Gisborne, then Lorena's friend invited us to visit a Maori Marae.



A Marae is a sacred Maori meeting area where weddings, funerals and celebrations take place. A non-Maori can only enter the Marae with permission from the elders, so this was a very special privilege. The Marae we visited was very unique; typically they are carved out of wood, but this one was built when decorative painting was becoming quite popular. There are some carvings within, but the majority of the art has been painted. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but here are some of the outside:



After leaving the Marae we splashed water on ourselves as a spiritual cleansing (I hope I got that explanation correct!)



Time for the long drive home... This time instead of going around the cape we took the quicker route through Waioeka Gorge. What a beautiful drive!! I would argue that this is actually more scenic than going the long way around. Some parts really reminded us of Canada, but the palm trees always added a nice NZ-touch.







I'm starting to think it'd be a good idea to buy a giant New Zealand wall map and start putting pins in the places we have visited. Now that we have a car we plan on seeing a LOT this summer!!