East Cape - Christmas 2009

Welcome to the awesome East Cape, New Zealand’s most easterly land mass, a remote but nonetheless stunning stretch of coastline spanning some 350kms from Opotiki to Gisborne.

Despite its beauty this is a part of the country all too few Kiwis, let alone tourists visit, but those who do venture this far off the beaten track are rewarded with their own beaches and bays where, with no one about, you can strip naked to your heart's content (there's no where quite like in New Zealand for filling in the white bits the sun missed!)

Nowhere else in New Zealand is quite like the detached East Cape; a Maori stronghold that serves as a warning of what was to come for yesteryear explorers like the infamous Captain Cook. We had always planned to tour the cape, but with our departure from Aotearoa only weeks away it made perfect sense to sign off in style, and so off we set on our final Kiwi camping adventure.

We had planned to make a run for the cape on Christmas Day, but that idea was shot down by the wonderful festive spread that awaited us in Devonport courtesy of Richard and Femke - our surrogate family here if you like. Without digressing, if it hadn't been for these two we wonder what might have come of our time in New Zealand, so Richard and Femke thanks a million, again.

Up early on Boxing Day – a special thank you goes out to Helen without whose generosity (she lent us her car) this trip would not have been possible – it was full steam ahead to Karangahake Gorge, the forgotten home of the north island's failed gold rush. Reach the far side of the gorge and the road splits into two: left to the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula (the scene for our previous two New Years), and right to the cape where people are few and the beaches are many.

Through the dump that is Whakatane and out the other side where State Highway 35 opens up in front of you like a race circuit straight. Visitors are spoilt by the wonderful views: bleak, postapocalyptic shores strewn with driftwood with no one to see for miles aside from a lone horseman.

On warm sunny days – as they all were – the Pacific shimmers turquoise, the water randomly punctuated by craggy slopes and steep gorges rich with the bright red blooming pohutukawa tree. Smoldering 50kms out to sea sits White Island, the country most active volcano, a stark reminder that this mere teen of a nation could blow skywards at any time. All too often you feel stuck in time (an often felt feeling living in New Zealand) and it’s easy to imagine yourself as a founding European settler locking horns with the native Maori in the early 1800s. “Time for a glass of wine,” pipes Marit, rousing me from my thoughts. “I think we should camp here tonight.”

And so it was, with day one drawing to a close on a deserted beach in Ohiwa; glass of wine in hand, crackling fire at our feet (note of warning: do not get caught lighting fires on the East Cape). If the Maori hadn’t been so recklessly divested of their land in the 19th century one wonders how this coastline might sit today. Much the same we’d guess, after all, the interior remains ragged and wild with the Raukumara creating the cape’s jagged spine.

Beach after deserted beach, bay after secluded bay, the Pacific Coast Highway threads its way north through small townships offering little more than a church or marae. Past Whanarua and Cape Runway the road juts inland reconnecting with the coastline at the idyllic Hicks Bay.

“Time for a glass of wine,” pipes Marit, rousing me from my thoughts, again – you get where we’re going with this, eh. Drive a few kms, stop for a swim – often a naked one – take in some rays and move on. There’s a lot to be said for having your own beach, where you can light a fire, chuck on some meat, and chill till your heart’s content. This is the real New Zealand, the one we fell in love with and the one we’ll pine long after we’ve gone. And given the cape’s remoteness, try not to make things more difficult for yourself than necessary - in our case, running down the car battery by playing music late into the night; trying to find someone who’s carrying jump leads in this part of the world is harder than you think! Another piece of advice: conserve your energy because you never know what’s around the corner. Take the East Cape lighthouse, for example. The views our breath-taking, but not quite so much as the 750-step climb to get there – a test of stamina that will have your legs aching for days.

And while we’re reeling off the health hazards, try to avoid driving into townships where the only sign of life are the patched gang members lining the street. We’re sure Tikitiki has more to offer, but we’ll try and time our next visit so the Black Power are out of town; just the look in their eye was menacing enough to prompt a premature shift into reverse gear!

Quickly, we headed south through Waipiro and Tokomaru Bays, and on to Tolaga Bay, home of the longest wharf in the southern hemisphere – and probably the worst fish and chips! To be fair, it’s about here where everything good about the cape ends and everything that’s shit about New Zealand begins.

If you like Kiwi wine as much as we do then you must have been to the Poverty Bay and Hawke’s Bay regions – you must also have a bright red nose and pock marked skin! Some of the country’s finest wine has its roots in the dozens of small boutique vineyards that scatter the area. But we already knew that coz we’d already done it. Our reason for being in Gisborne was less about vino and more about music; the Rhythm & Vines festival to be exact.

Whatever the locals might say about their town being overrun by tens of thousands of pissed adolescents for three days at the end of every year there’s no ignoring that R&V is New Zealand’s top music event (perhaps only decent music event given that the country’s top visiting act of 2009 was probably Iron bloody Maiden!

Fortunately, as a much admired member of the New Zealand media (cough) I was handed VIP tickets, which meant no queues, great views and a few interviews with some of the event’s star studded acts. Moby headlined, but it was The Editors who perhaps turned most heads (they were exceptionally easy to interview, a very likeable bunch unlike Moby whose interview was more akin to pulling teeth) with a stellar set that, certainly in our eyes, put all the Kiwi artists to shame.

The choice for Waiohika Estate vineyard to host the yearly gathering was inspired as the terrain slices into the land creating natural amphitheatres which each play host to the stages. That said, we’d strongly advise against trying Witters’ 2009 vintage given the number of people who substituted the vines for Portaloos. From Gisborne – where on the delightful Waikanae Beach we stood and watched as Moko, the resident dolphin, played in the shallow waters with holidaymakers – we backtracked to Opotoki through Gisborne Gorge.

Here we took time to walk the trail blazed by failed European farmers (the muppets persevered trying to sheep farm the Raukumara Range for 30 years before calling it quits), another little adventure that ended with a naked river swim; there’s a lot of nude frolicking to be had on the East Cape given how there’s never anyone around!