…Bring December Flowers! More rain today, steady, heavy downpours! No wonder it’s so green here, and flowers are everywhere. The pohutukawa trees have started blooming, and nasturtiums are growing like weeds along roadsides! We stayed inside today and worked on future plans.

Gray skies through rain speckled windows.

You can’t be too upset about the rain when you have a palm tree!

I used the time to make a few recipes. Thanks to our previous host we had avocados from her garden that were ripening quickly!

Perfectly ripe avo’s for guacamole!

Yummy!

We explored nearby areas today. Starting with the town that our accommodation sits above, Maketu. A town of under 1500 people (over 65% Maori) has a local, quiet, calm, non-touristy vibe. It sits between the Maketu estuary of the Kaituna river and Okurei Pt., the historic Maori Pa site overlooking the beach. Maketu is the historic landing site of the Arawa, one of the pioneer canoes of the Maori that left their homeland of “Hawaiki” between 800-1000 years ago, and landed in New Zealand or Aotearoa (loosely translated as ‘land of the long white cloud’) as they named it. The Te Arawa confederation of Maori iwi (tribes) and hapu (subtribes) living in the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty areas trace their ancestry from the people of this canoe.

The town is below the line of houses below us. The estuary is the water to the left of the sand spit, the ocean beach is to the right.

We drove down and parked at the only restaurant in town! We strolled the walkway into ‘town centre’ where they have a kids playground, a ‘freedom camping area’ (for self contained campers) and even an exercise area with sturdy simple exercise equipment!

The start of the beach in Maketu.

After checking out the only store in town, a tiny but surprisingly well stocked convenience store (or ‘Dairy’ as they are called here) we continued our tour of the area. We drove backroads for about 15 minutes to the Kaituna Scenic Wetlands Reserve, at the west end of the Maketu estuary, where the Kaituna river empties into the Bay of Plenty.

A fishing dock was built at the edge of the dunes where local families were congregated, camping, swimming, fishing and visiting.

On the right side of the dock kids were playing in the waves, supervised by vigilant parents!

On the left side of the dock the river current fought against the ocean tide, apparently a great spot to fish!

And in the parking area, a really nice toilet!

This morning we left the calm restful atmosphere of the Convent Hotel and drove into downtown Auckland to SkyCity, an entertainment, hotels, restaurants, casino and theatre complex that boasts the SkyTower, the second tallest freestanding structure in the Southern Hemisphere! Our purpose; a 10:30am appointment to walk around the SkyDeck and to jump off of it! Thankfully the wind was a mild 7mph and the recent storm had passed. We even had some sun!We suited up  along with 3 more adventurous women and took the quick elevator ride to the top! We stepped outside!

This was actually after we finished our walk on the deck, we were all relieved to get back behind the railing!

Our guide walked us out onto the platform – sans railings, and led us through several challenges. We all got visibly more relaxed during the 20-30 minutes we were out there, even letting go of our guide rope in front of us (which Robert never used as a security handhold!)We all headed back down to the lobby and Robert and I exchanged our SkyWalk harnesses for the SkyJump harnesses. Another woman who hadn’t done the SkyWalk suited up and was the first to jump today! I was second!

In the cable room. The guides are very vigilant about safety!

And before you know it, the wind is whistling through your hair and you don’t even notice that you’re screaming!

Robert’s turn!

I could hear him scream from the base of the tower where I waited for him to arrive!

You can see video of Robert’s jump HERE!

We were all done by 12:30! What a morning! We still had plenty of time to get to our next accomodation, a VRBO in Maketu, on the beach about a 40 minute drive north of Rotorua. It was a pleasant drive, mostly on highways, until we got to a steep drive up and over a pass in the Kaimai Range and lots of roundabouts, road construction and rush hour in Tauranga, the closest large town.

We had a rainbow guiding us part of the way to our destination, at the end of the rainbow!

We got moved in and enjoyed a glass of wine as we surveyed the view and found out we have a sunset view here!

An exciting day with a fitting end!