Welcome to our house

 Day 4 - Paihia to Auckland via Opononi

We had always planned to visit Manea Footprints of Kupe in Opononi, a Maori cultural museum that had some good reviews, but in our usual fashion we only looked into things like ticketing last night over dinner, finding that there were only two visiting times available, 10am and 1pm.

As the tour went for 75 minutes and we had a four hour drive after that to reach Auckland we went for the 10am slot, which meant we needed to be on the road by 8.30, a little earlier than we would have liked.

We arrived in Opononi to discover that we should also have checked the weather forecast for the west coast. We had left a pleasant morning with a forecast of low 20s to arrive in cold, wet and windy weather.

The tour consisted of an informative and entertaining understanding of the Maoris' arrival in New Zealand from across the seas, led by the forefather Kupe. It was a lovely way of educating and keeping the Maori language and stories alive.

The long drive along the west coast was broken up with some stops along the way for some short nature walks to see some big kauri pines, and a lunch stop at Dargaville, a town that seemed frozen in the past. It was a decent size but appeared a little run down, with old buildings and residents to match.