Karikari Peninsula

On Saturday morning we took the 'Inland Road' onto the Karikari Peninsuka which borders the Western side of Doubtless Bay, Tokarau Beach stretching along the Bay for 19 km. The first road to the right is Ramp Road which several other motorhomers have told us is a favourite place to stay when on the Peninsula so we headed down it expecting to see lots of vehicles parked but there was not one in sight - just lots of no camping and no motorhome signs! On further investigation and after travelling down a rough track above the sand dunes for a few hundred yards we did find 4 buses - 3 occupied by semi-permaments and one just about to leave which belonged to Ann and Graeme, a couple from Waihi, who were in our Happy Hour group at the NZMCA Manganese Point Camp out of Whangarei. They had spent 3 nights there but had to leave to get some repairs done in Whangarei. It seems that everyone just ignores the old "No Motorhomes" signs and it's not policed.

So we can't say "we didn't know your honour"

So after settling ourselves onto a reasonably flat site we walked a short distance inland to have a paddle in Rotopokaka Lake, known to everybody, including the locals, as Coca-cola Lake because the colour around the edges is exactly the same colour as coke although, because the sun was shining, the middle was a nice dark blue. We had been told that the water is great for washing your clothes as it takes all the stains out but we didn't test it out!

2 feet short of the cola line!

However on Sunday morning we did try swivelling our hips for pipis in the water at low tide a km or 2 down the beach as we had also been told about the great pipi bed and could see masses of opened shells. However we had no luck! The 'pipi twist' was more difficult than normal as well as rather than digging into sand there seemed to be a big depth of broken shells to get through - I guess that's why we didn't find any live ones!

It was too windy and rough to try fishing but Len enjoyed watching the couple from the neighbouring bus kite-fishing which involves using a kite (it was a good strong westerly wind) to take out the line which had 5 hooks on it. We saw them put it out 3 times but they weren't able to catch any fish.