Saturday February 1, 2014

Yesterday, while I was doing the laundry, Ralf went into the Town of Patea and got the fixings for our evening meal.

While there he spotted a giant whale bone, a replica Maori canoe and a lovely church. He wanted to stop at these sites this morning to show me and take a better photo from the lookout over the black sand dunes and the coastal cliffs.

Because we were in a cabin we had everything ready to go last night and we were able to make an earlier start. The whale bones were a sculpture that represented a Maori legend.

This area was the site of Maori land wars in the 1800’s. The canoe is a replica of Turi and his Aotea canoe from which the local tribe are descendants. It was put into place in 1933.

Today\’s ride was quite hilly, but we had the wind at our back and were able to move along quite quickly. We started the day at an elevation of 65 metres and finished the day at 310 metres with a lot of ups and downs in between.

We were in Hawera by 11:15 and decided to stop for lunch. We spotted this little old lady (probably in her 70’s) checking out our bikes which were leaned against the café window. She was particularly interested in Ralf’s. Ralf suggested that she might hop on and try to ride away with it, I suggested that she might just be looking for some fit young man to make a move on. I was right, she came into the café and asked Ralf how far he had come and where we he was going to, definitely making a move on him. I answered her questions just to let her know that he was taken:)  She wished us safe travels and went on her way.

There is a water tower in Hawera which you can climb the 215 steps to the top.

Anyone who knows Ralf will know that if there is a tower that he can climb he will climb it. It costs $2.50 per person to climb the stairs which of course we did.

Fontera is one of the largest co-operative dairy producers in New Zealand they produce over 1 billion litres of milk a year.  That\’s a lot of milk, you would think milk would be inexpensive in New Zealand, but it isn\’t, because it isn\’t subsidized.   They also export a tremendous amount of powdered milk to China.

After lunch we headed to King Edward park which has the extremely rare Wendy statue in the park. It is one of only two in the world.

We arrived in Stratford at 2:00pm and were at the campsite by 2:30. We asked the price on a cabin, and got a deal. Not as cheap as last night but still a good deal. Tomorrow we are heading of on the Forgotten World Highway and may have to freedom camp for a couple of nights. We have now been on the road for almost 2 months and have cycled 2,768 kms. Awesome and still loving it.

We often see blackboards outside of cafes with funny slogans on them, here is the funny for the day.