Big Trip

We were sad to have to leave the motel - the english couple who run it were very friendly, and their son Robbie has made good friends with Max & Erin. I think they've really appreciated having someone of a similar age to play with after so long travelling. The drive to Tairua was unremarkable, but I find that inevitably I have less comment to make on the NZ landscape as we've become more familiar with it. We did stop at Waihi on the way for a look at the Martha gold mine. It's an enormous hole in the ground. They have one of those immense dumper trucks at the top so that you can stand next to it and have a photo taken of you being dwarfed by it. Then you go & look down into the immense terraced crater that is the mine, and you can see them coming and going, looking like tiny matchbox toys, with equally small excavators loading them up at the bottom. There didn't seem to be much going on, but then if you can do that little and still bring in $1m a week, then why work harder?
Tairua itself is in a lovely spot on an estuary, with plenty of sand and shallow water to play in. We drove up to Paku, a volcanic cone at the harbour entrance with yet more 360-degree views over the Pacific and the harbour and lovely beaches. The legend says that if you walk to the top of Paku, as we did, you'll return in seven years. Oh well.
Then we went back and Max & Erin joined the local kids jumping off a bridge into the harbour. Erin took a while to steel herself to the task, but made it eventually. She and Max were by far the youngest there - all the others were probably ten or over.