How boring you might think to keep going back to the same spot. The reason you own your campervan is so that you can go exploring and in most cases you would be right. But this time we wanted to have a holiday before the mad rush we didn’t want to be driving from place to place with all the holiday traffic starting to hit the roads. So being the boring couple that we are  we set off last Friday to the place we love the most Pururi Bay.

Every time over the hill at the entrance to the camp we wonder how full the camp is going to be, and to be honest we expected it to be pretty full this time and we where not disappointed with almost every beachfront spot taken. We had however reserved ours and it was good to see that it was sitting there vacant for us.

Last time we where here we parked on right hand side of the pohutukawa tree on the north side of the camp and this time it was to be the left. So no problems as long as the tree does not obstruct the satellite receiver was the instruction from the boss otherwise we are moving, however no problem with the TV and we had a great waterfront site for the next 7 days.

Not long after setting up camp we ran into the first of our neighbours John and Glennis with John looking at me and stating the usual “I know you from somewhere” I actually get this quite a lot having worked most of my life in sales of some sort but nothing we talked about seemed to click as to where it was. Two days later I clicked that we had both worked together at John Andrew Ford in 1981/2 a lifetime ago!!

On the other side of us we met Graham and Irene who left the day before we did and had been there for 7 days prior. They had with them next door Irene’s brother Bob and his wife and next door to them their neighbours from Mt Manganui so a real family affair.

What was interesting is that both John and Glennis and Graham and Irene and met this year on a Galavanting OZ trip from Darwin to Perth and as both couples talked about it you could see that they had enjoyed it immensely. Maybe this is something for Sarah and I to consider and maybe do one winter.

 

Most people that head to Pururi Bay go for the fishing and whilst it was a little lean it was a very competitive atmosphere each day as each inflatable went out and came back to see who had caught what. I can report that Graham and Irene held the record for the best catch with 9 decent snapper between them on the Saturday and they smoked some of these along with the Kingfish that John had caught.

Sarah and I also caught three decent snapper on the Monday and after having had one fresh that night we smoked the other two. I never took a photo of the result as it was less than perfect but we turned it into fish and corn pie on the Tuesday night and it was delicious. Next time we do this I will have a bit more knowledge and the smoking should be better.

The bird life at the bay as I have mentioned in one of my previous posts is prolific and the Oystercatchers that we saw nesting on the previous visit and had one little one who hated having his photo taken and with only my phone to get the shot it proved very difficult. It was however amazing to see the baby growing each day and you really could see it grow and change as the days went by.

It wasn’t just the Oystercatchers with the babies the Quail around the camp had various amounts of young ones and the Black Billed Gulls where doing their best to add to the future population right in front of the van. You would have thought they could be more discrete.

Almost every night you could hear the Kiwi’s in the bush behind us but I am sorry to say that this sign is as close as I got to a photo as at 2am I was not going to head off into the bush looking for them. The photo of the Pururi Tree was taken because there was a Wood Pigeon eating the berries but again with my phone another useless shot, you cannot even see the bird in the tree but another example of the varied bird life. I really must but a decent camera for Christmas.

It was also adopt a duck week with this one hanging round the campervan all week looking for those surplus scraps.

I have been coming to Pururi Bay for 16 years and have been taking photos of the sunset for as long as I have been coming here it’s just a view that I will never get tired of. Each night the clouds change the boats or lack of them in the harbour change as well and it’s never the same shot twice.

The first time we came to Pururui Bay if you wanted water there was a hand crank for the water bore and no taps or running water. Since then each year there have been little improvements, like the addition of showers about 10 years ago. This year they have added a cooking room for the tourists, not a kitchen as there is no running water or sinks but an enclosed room to cook in if the wind is to strong to cook outside. And they have added two picnic areas with these large BBQ tables it will be interesting to see how they are utilized but I guess the campers at the back of the camp will at least be able to access an area close to the beach.

So after seven glorious days we packed up and headed home for the Christmas period. The campervan will now go into storage until late January when Sarah and I will hit the road on our first trip to the south island so this blog will probably not have any new entries over the next month or so.

Many thanks to Jonas Ng and the team at Acacia Motorhomes for their help in the journey so far and we both love our Dethleffs Globetrotter it has been a great way to finish 2017 and we look forward to seeing more with it in 2018.
If you would like to see all the places we have visited click here

If you would like to see the ratings of the places we have stayed click here