Day 44 - Rainy Morning, Goat Island, misty road to an empty beach, no pancakes.

Tuesday 13th Feb
We woke up to heavy rain and a very misty view.
Humidity was 100%, the sea mist was all you could see.
We hunkered down for the morning and did internet stuff like sorting out our accommodation for Paihia and getting caught up on the blog.
Around 1200 there was a break in the rain, so we went to see if we could snorkel around Goat island. This was the reason we had come here, its a great place to see fish and the university has a marine centre here. At weekends and in the school holidays its apparently packed so we had timed our stay to be mid week in term time hoping for a more peaceful visit.

We didn't think so when we got to the beach, the water was not clear, and the mist was making it look a bit dangerous. There wasn't much swell, but there was no one around if we got into any trouble.
We had a good look around, it's a great place to dodge wave and scramble over rocks, with some fantastic tide pools. As always in New Zealand, even though it was cloudy, it was still warm.

Around 14:45 we decided to head up to the Goat Island Marine Research Discovery Centre to have a look. I wish we'd gone earlier because we ended up being ushered out as they closed. Even though our visit was cut short by closing time we had a great time seeing the remote camera that they drop in the sea (I helped build simpler remote sea cameras at IOS where Karen and I met), watching the footage of an octopus opening a jar that they'd taken, learning about all the sea life around the reserve and what happens if the top predators are removed (by fishing for example).

touching pond where everything could be touched

this felt ticklish as they nibbled at our fingers

We decided that we needed to check out the beaches in case the weather improved the next day, so we headed off toward Pakiri beach. The road looked good on the map, and we didn't have the sat nav leading us astray, we knew where we were going.
Well not long into the trip the tarmac disappeared, then there were warning signs that this road was single track and to give way to cars coming up. The road was pretty rutted and had a fair amount of rain erosion in places (and the edges).
Eventually we descended below the mist and back onto tarmac roads.

Pakiri beach is part of a nature reserve and has signs up saying no dogs so we weren't expecting to find a couple loading their dog into the car in the car park; no surprise when we walked up the beach and found paw prints.

We hung around long enough to take a few photos, but the sea mist and the wind were making it less than ideal to spend longer so we headed back to the BnB to get on with stuff that needed network connectivity and hoped for better weather for the next day.
We did our planning and blogging until 1830, and decided to go to the Sawmill Cafe; we were really looking forward to trying the rest of their menu.
As we got to the Sawmill, the sign outside had a closed board hung underneath, we could see the door was open though so we headed in. The barmaid from yesterday was there so I thought I'd be helpful and point out that they didn't look closed. Except they were, they'd decided that it had been a slow day so the kitchen was now shut.
Their only suggestion was to see if the Leigh bar was open, we headed back toward the main bit of Leigh, it didn't look open at first but when we parked up we could see activity. We were the only people in at first, we ordered and then had a look around. The bar was sheep shearing themed and had a lot of genuine sheep shearing equipment to look at, as well as converted wool bailers that were now tables. Another group of 4 people wandered in a little later to eat as well but that seemed to be it for the evening. We can understand why the Sawmill Cafe decided it was a slow day!