Napier to Whakatane

Next stop on the road trip was Whakatane. Rather than taking the direct route from Napier, I instead drove up the coast to Gisborne. I stopped there for lunch at an awesome little bookstore that had a café on the second floor.

After lunch, I took a walk on the beach before hitting the road again.

The road between Gisborne and Whakatane runs Waioeka Gorge, a stunningly beautiful and almost completely deserted road. There weren't really places to pull off to take pictures, but I had a really lovely drive. It was still light when I arrived at the ranch that I would be staying at for the next two nights, having booked it through Airbnb.

This is where I stayed, it was quite cozy!I was sitting in one of the chairs on the front porch reading when a ranch hand walked past, carrying a rifle. He’d been hunting rabbits. This probably should have made me nervous, but it didn’t in the slightest. Not sure if that speaks to having been a ranch kid or some stunning naïveté.

I was staying fairly far outside of the town of Whakatane itself, though I did head in there for dinner the first night.

My luck with the weather didn't hold as much the next day, it rained for most of the morning, so I curled up and read a book, while listening to horses sneeze outside the window.