The East Cape is the loneliest and quietest corner of the entire North Island of New Zealand. A brochure points out all the tourist attractions. Unbelievable: you can swim, picnic and fish on the beaches here. Aha. There are rivers where you can go jet boating. If you have one. Oh yes, and you can ride horses. And that’s about it.
The landscape is wild, the land rises steeply directly behind the coast. The sea breaks hard on lava rocks. The only petrol station for 100km is almost invisible, a pump in the middle of nowhere. Immediately afterwards: horses, sheep, cows. On the road and beside it. The sky hangs low in the coastal mountains. The sound of an approaching car startles me.
The last 20 kilometres to the easternmost point of New Zealand are again gravel roads. East Cape is home to the most easterly lighthouse in the world. We climb the 757 steps to the top in a stiff breeze and have lunch. Perfect peace and quiet at the most easterly point in the western world.
This is followed by another 100 kilometres of lonely country roads. We pass through villages whose names you can neither speak nor remember, and it doesn’t matter because nobody knows them. We were just there. We don’t like the first hostel after the East Cape, so we drive on to the next settlement that nobody can pronounce or remember.
Brians Place is a nice little hostel overlooking a wild bay. Bunk beds under the roof. The rain splashes, the sea roars, cigarettes smoke, beer smokes and my laptop surfs on the modem. In the “town centre” there is a derelict bank building from 1928 – Morbis, abandoned and dilapidated. I’m waiting for Bonnie and Clyde, but they must have got lost on the way here.
Tolaga Bay is home to the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere. It stretches 660 metres into the sea and ends in nothing. It has been decaying in the salt water and rain for 80 years. The rusted reinforcing steel cracked the concrete a long time ago.
Our next destination for the day is Gisborne, the first town after 300 kilometres of solitude on the east coast. The accommodation is an old nunnery. For the web designer, the convent is heaven: Wi-Fi, free and 24 hours a day. Many employees say it is haunted.
The conversion of the convent couldn’t be funnier. Nuns: Celibacy, abstinence, prayers, enlightenment. Hostel: Condom machine in the loo, high promiscuity rate. England drinks as usual while Argentina consumes a nice little bucket.
We watch a film in the room. One gay man sings the American national anthem into the arse of the second. The latter practises impressive techniques on the third’s bum in close-up. Or to put it more religiously: Jericho’s walls come down with trombone-blowing angels. Delicious :-)
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.