So we headed back down the road to Taupo, just to check that it really does rain all the time there (we can confirm that it does). We stopped at this viewpoint and almost missed the waterfall by not getting out of the car in the rain. We couldn’t see it from the car, but could hear as soon as we got out.

In Taupo we stopped for coffee and to pick up some lunch from this bakery (well we had to really). I tried out Brumby’s date cake which is similar to, but not as nice as, Mrs Brumby’s date and walnut cake.

We then headed on to Opotiki where we had planned to spend the evening. Not much here, but we did find a man selling rather nice pizza from a van, oh and Tom managed to get his feet wet by standing on the beach taking pictures with his back to the sea – made me chuckle.

Tomorrow we head back up the coast towards Auckland.

Opotiki map

After coffee in Esquires (fast becoming our favourite NZ coffee shop chain)…

…this afternoon we went on a vineyard tour. We were picked up by our guide Vince and then picked up four other girls from their hotels on the way to the first of five vineyards. At the first place we tried about half a dozen different bottles and learned a bit about each wine from one of the owners before moving on. When you taste different wines one immediately after another it’s interesting to be able to compare the flavours and comment on the differences, but after the third or fourth vineyard they all pretty much blend into one!

At the third vineyard in Ngatarawa we were all amused by their slogan (below) where the last word is supposed to say “wine” but we all thought it looked like something else (maybe it was the wine though?!).

We had a great afternoon though and were very lucky to be with a group of people very similar to us in age and interests (from Leeds, Dublin and Perth) and we all got on really well and had a good laugh. So much so that the 6 of us all went out for dinner afterwards at a local Turkish restaurant in Napier.

Tomorrow we have the longest driving day of our trip as we travel to Opotiki via Gisbourne (we hope to be able to do the journey in about 5 hours). If we have time we’d like to take a detour to the Vineyard at Tolaga Bay but I suspect that as I’m doing all the driving in NZ (because we have quite a big car) that I won’t want to drive for an extra hour off our main route (sorry Sarah!).