Whakatane

We started our day with a trip to Starbucks in downtown Rotorua to get a decent coffee to start the day. They have not discovered the in-room filter coffee makers in any of the hotels / motels we have stayed in so far and the Holiday Inn was not an exception. Standard fare is Nescafe instant coffee. The odd question of the day was whether I wanted pouring cream or whipped cream in my Starbucks coffee.

Downtown Rotorura is sort of like a giant strip mall with nice sidewalks and large overhanging canopies. Sort of 60's ish.

We only had 85 km to our next destination so we were able to spend a good part of the day in Whakatane - pronounced {Fokka-tar-nay}.

Our first stop was downtown at the iSite, the tourist info site located in most towns and cities.

We decided to head to Ohope Beach, just a few km out of town, for the afternoon. We drove to a lookout over the town and had our picnic lunch.

We headed down to the beach and parked at the west end where there was a hiking trail to the next bay, Otarawairere Bay, not too far away. Between the two however, was a headland that had to be scaled. Fortunately the steeper sections had steps. I think there were around 700 of them there and back. Had some great overviews of the Ohope Beach which is very wide at low tide.

Notice how few people are on the beach! Not like Florida....

When we got to Otarawairere Bay, we had some entertainment with a couple of kayakers surfing in through the rocks.

After we got back to the beach, we changed into our togs and got out into the surf. The water was nice and warm.

After swimming, we walked down the beach and back to dry off.

We checked into our nice motel suite and got cleaned up to go downtown for supper. On the way we drove to the harbour entrance and I just missed getting a photo of a boat coming in with about 6 knots of tidal current running. Pretty scary and I'm not sure I would ever try that!

We went to a casual restaurant and had a nice supper. We were back at the Motel by 8:15 to get a good night's rest for tomorrow's drive to Gisborne.