Gisborne

It was an early start for us this morning as we had arranged to go on a trip to feed the stingrays at Tatapouri Bay. As Bruce put it, he was going to be way out of his comfort zone. Little did the truckies know, who drove past tooting their horns at us, that we were already up!. We piled into the cars for this adventure and for the first time ever, the Philpott’s were not only ready on time, but were actually early.

We arrived at Tatapouri Bay and two of our group decided they did not want to go. The rest of us duly paid our money and donned the waders they gave us, grabbed a bamboo pole to steady ourselves with, and off we cautiously went out onto the reef. We were in about half a metre of water and were only  about 30 metres from shore when we were greeted by kingfish swimming around our feet. They were big too – at least a metre long and the size that we would normally catch after motoring out from home for about 40 minutes. They were pretty hungry and clearly used to being fed along with the stingrays so we were all given instructions not to put our fingers in the water. If we wanted to put our hands in the water it needed to be a tight fist. Of course Bruce had to try it out and immediately was attacked by a kingfish that drew blood on the back of his wrist.

We edged out further onto the reef, trying very hard to avoid the deep parts off to the side. Once we were about 100 metres out, we were instructed to bunch tightly together and then we were joined by three stingrays (as well as the kingfish which kept swimming between our legs). The first stingray was massive – about 1.5 metres across and quite chunky. She had a bulge on her back which was apparently full of babies. This stingray, we were told was about 25 years old, and they normally live until 30. This stingray  also loved attention and would nudge our legs, bringing her head out of the water (as pictured below), looking to be petted. She was soon joined by two eagle rays who also approached us, but stayed on the bottom so we had to reach under water to pet them. They felt silky smooth and quite slippery.

All through the experience we were given lots of information about the stingrays, and near the end we were all given a bit of fish to feed to the large one. We had to slide it under her head and somehow into her mouth while the guides worked to keep the kingfish at bay. That seemed to work well for everyone but me. Although stingrays don’t have teeth, she somehow managed to take a chunk out of the top and bottom of one of my fingers.

It was a great experience, with the worst part being the weather – there were some really strong wind gusts and if you were not standing solidly they would blow you over. It was also really cold.

Please note that the pictures above are not my own, but it looked just like this. My camera stayed securely inside my waders in case I was blown over!.

From there it was back to the vans and off we drove to Gisborne. The plan was for us all to empty our waste tanks, fill our water tanks, fuel tanks etc and then all meet at the beach reserve and head into the AGM together.

The queue to get our tanks done was amazing and there are a few real idiots out there. We came across one of them who went in the dump station access driveway in the wrong lane, after jumping out of the queue that had politely formed,  thereby blocking all vans exiting, and he still couldn’t get near the taps etc because he was on the wrong side. Amazing considering this person had a membership number in the 6000’s so ought to know what he was doing by now!

The plan worked well except for one of our group who ended up at his mother in law’s  house instead of at the beach reserve, but we got that sorted and our plan to get all parked in the AGM grounds together worked a treat. Looking forward to the rally!

As we went to bed that night there were nearly 600 motorhomes on the grounds. People seem relaxed and friendly, and we had a peaceful night.