Gore Blimey Gov'
Trip Start
Oct 18, 2010
1
56
60
Trip End
Jan 18, 2011
Gore Bay, South Island, New Zealand
Monday, January 3, 2011
An early start was made from the DOC campsite of Puhi Puhi, not because it smelt, it fact we had a river bath which is always a refreshing start to the day. We were heading into Kaikoura this morning, to pop in to the walk in doctors to ask for some pills for Ghardia. Nothing major, but there was a small wait to see the doctors. We had packed up and left early and arrived at the doctors at 9.30. We were out by 11ish and parked up at the beach for some breakfast lunch. We cooked up a storm of Beans, on bread, with sausages. We sat on the beach and watched as people water skied and generally had boating fun. It was a lovely hot day and really begged the question as to where we would head for the night. We got out the map and did some planning. There was a little camping sign on the map located at Gore bay, not too far from Kaikora but far enough so we felt that we had achieved something, so we though we might head there. We looked up to see a man and two kids struggling to pull their boat in. Leaving the rest of our breakfast we rushed down to help them and in two ticks we had it out, we started to ascend the beach back to our breakfast spot, only to find that the blanket with our breakfast on was covered in seaguls, they had eaten it all. Annoying that it was we felt somewhat foolish in leaving it unguarded like that, open to predators and all. We came to the conclusion that we it served us right for being so keen to come to someone's aid!
We drove out of Kaikoura on the staggering coastal road, scanning the water as there's always hope Shamu the whale, or someone similar, might jump out at any moment. We turned off the road at Cheviot towards Gore Bay with fingers crossed that a campsite does in fact exist here and that its not just a figment of the map's imagination. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find that Gore Bay settlement pretty much is a campsite and there were three sections of it, in different locations, to choose from. As usual the first one that we looked around was the best, so we came back to it, registered and then parked up. We chatted to some nice people across the way, before heading off to the beach for a quick swim, it was a bit rough and we found ourselves trying to hold on to our swim suits in the surf. Enough of that we headed home, not before peaking a look at the tennis courts which weren't in good shape, we decided that it probably wasn't the place to play. Once back at camp, we read our books did some showering and prepared dinner. We had pork and apple burgers, mango salsa beet-root and some grilled marrow, all very nice indeed. We then followed the surfers who were all leaving from their tents towards the beach. We watched as they made the best of limited surf, on the way back to the tent we spotted a great big hammock and decided we needed a rest, we rested and then found that what we thought was a hammock was actually a human fishing net, set overnight to capture unsuspecting people. After a lot of squirming and wriggling we were out and went straight to bed after all the excitement.
