Gisborne

July 28, 2011

Gisborne has been much more exciting than I was expecting.  I came in late in the dark on the bus and I wasn’t too sure of the place.  The hostel was nice, but in a funny area.  I made dinner and soon met some of the other folks staying here.

The most outrageous, outgoing, and somewhat obnoxious person was a drunk Japanese man.  He kept saying, “This is my last night!”  Later I learned that he’d been working here in Gisborne and the next day he was leaving for Auckland.  He spent a good amount of the evening hitting on me just because of my curly hair.  Fortunately there were loads of other people around laughing their heads off at him and eventually he just fell asleep with his head back snoring away in the chair next to me.

This morning he was gone, but the other lovely people from last night were still around.  One of them, Grant, had a car and wanted to take the rest of us around to see the sights.  Grant grew up in Gisborne until he was a teen.  He took Carl, from England, Sabrina, from Germany, and me around.  

It was a beautiful day so we went up Kaiti for the views of where Captain Cook first spotted New Zealand.  Then we drove around to several beautiful beaches.  We watched the surfers try to catch some waves and soaked up the beautiful sun rays.  Grant was keen for some coffee so we found a little cafe by the town beaches.

We followed the coffee with a visit to a park and the town botanical gardens.  At the park we played along with the kids on all the fun playground equipment.  Grant pointed out the house his grandparents lived in and also drove us past the house he grew up in before taking us out to the local museum.

Grant’s grandparents used to be the curators for the museum.  He got into conversation with the woman behind the desk and discovered that his grandfather was her great-great uncle.  They were second cousins!  She gave us the local admission fee of $2 for the museum, which Grant paid for all of us.

We had lunch at a Noodle Canteen and then went to the Gisborne Wine Center to taste some wines.  It was so warm and beautiful that we sat outside and enjoyed six different wines.  

Everything about this day has been unexpected.  I came to Gisborne without any plans and with only a vague idea of what I wanted to do and today has yet again proved that this is the best way to travel in New Zealand.  Don’t over-plan!  Go with the flow and you’ll never know what might happen!