Hello!

We are currently in Napier, Hawkes Bay working so we haven't really been up to anything too exciting...

On January 2nd, we left Auckland and headed towards Tarunga on the Bay of Plenty. We were hoping to reach Hawkes Bay and find some work! Tarunga was a fairly large town, we stayed there for a night but there wasn't really much to do other than mooch around the town...

We then drove from Taurunga all the way to Gisborne, missing out the East Cape because we really needed to find work before the situation become desperate. The distance between Taurunga and Gisborne doesn't look very far on the map but it took us most of the day because the roads are so bendy and there are so many hills which Ollie really doesn't enjoy! On the way we stopped in a town called Opotiki to check out a walk that can be done to the crater of an active volcano. White Island sits 40km off the shore so you can only get to it by boat or plane. The trips were quite expensive so we were sensible and decided to plod on and look for work. We can revisit Opotiki on the way back up! We arrived in Gisborne late in the afternoon and went straight to a campsite near the beach and close to the center of town. The campsite was heaving! There were heaps of families and way too many people so we left and went to the only other campsite in Gisborne.

Gisborne

The next morning, after sussing out where all of the hostels were, we drove around in search of some employment. Usually hostels advertise casual employment positions on their notice boards. The first hostel we went to was called the Flying Nunn. It was a very strange looking hostel and probably a converted old church or something. When Rach and i approached the entrance there were two women talking, they seemed to ignore us and so i thought they were just residents. The door was locked and so i went to press the buzzer when one of the ladies asked if she could help. I asked her if she had a notice board and she quickly relied that she would put our notice up for us. (I had a map in my hand.) I told her that we didn't want to advertise anything, we just wanted to have a look for jobs. She was very blunt and very rude and told us that we couldn't have a look at the notice board and that there weren't any jobs anyway! We tried a few more hostels but didn't have alot of luck, they at least let us have a look at their notice boards but there weren't any jobs. So jobless and a bit disappointed we went back to the campsite.

In the afternoon we had a look around the town and then had a game of mini golf. At first i was winning but then i decided that it wouldn't look very good if Neil lost so i let him win.

The next day we set off towards Hawkes Bay.