Whakatane

Today we headed toward Whakatane to spend some time with Deb, Judy’s sister. It seems that we were not the only ones with the same idea as she also had Trina and Pete, and her Bruce staying with her.

The weather that was forecast for Lake Rotoma arrived today so yet more rain – the theme of our holiday! This was the first time we had seen Deb’s new house and it looked very nice. There was still more work to do outside but that should be expected with all the bad weather. Deb tells us she has lovely views out to sea and also to Mt Edgecumbe, but the weather prevented us from seeing that.

Deb’s house is up a fairly steep driveway and the motorhome could not go there without scraping it’s bottom on the road so we elected to stay parked on the roadside outside her gate.

Deb and Trina decided to give the “My Kitchen Rules” contestants a run for their money by cooking us a gourmet dinner. They worked well as a team and produced a lovely lasagne dinner, and Deb’s Bruce did a great job of the dishes afterwards. Thanks a lot all of you.

We spent the evening looking at photos and catching up on our families. Trina and Pete were very entertaining and Pete has lots of innovative ideas that appealed to Bruce.

Judy did not sleep all that well that night because Deb had said that the road had flooded  in the past. Judy had visions of the motorhome floating away over night (well, maybe not to that extent), but she was worried enough that we were peering out the windows every hour or so to monitor the state of the water on the road outside. By about 3am we realised that we were pretty safe so finally went to sleep.

Needless to say we slept in, but when we did emerge Deb had cooked a great breakfast of bacon and eggs, hash browns and baked beans and spagetti. What a treat – a bit different from the usual muesli or fruit and yoghurt!

Overnight though we had decided that we would head for home today. Although the rain had stopped, another band of it was on the way!. The roads were open at present so we thought it would be good to make a run for it. Therefore, after the sumptuous breakfast we headed back on the road – this time Flaxmill bound.