Alternative title Est
We left flat Palmy on a fine Friday morning and drove about
400 kilometers through the usual green hills with sheep and wonderful views,
the cold, windy, and rainy desert road with volcanoes hidden in the clouds, the
volcanic lake area, geothermal springs, the rainforest “bush”, and onto the
sunny and warm, sandy beach of the Pacific at Whakatane-all in 6.5 driving
hours! (The locals would drive it in 5.5.) By the way, Whakatane is pronounced “fokka
a tar nay”.
Whakatane is the sunniEST city in New Zealand and we enjoyed
the sun on the shell beach-broken, worn down shells with a few rocks are the
sand. The Pacific Coast Highway around the coast of Eastland also boasts the largEST
Pohutakawa tree in the world, the longEST wharf in the Southern Hemisphere, the
earliEST city to see the sunrise, the highEST rail viaduct in Australasia, and
EastEST lighthouse in the world. We soaked up the warmth and sunshine as any
Texan would do after several months of rainy weather.
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| The Shell Beach |
East Cape Lighthouse. The lighthouse used to be on East Island in the background, but was moved because of the difficulty of accessing the island.
The longest wharf in the Southern Hemisphere was built in 1929 in Tolago Bay and is 660 meters (around 2200 feet) long and not in good condition.
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| The Mohaka Viaduct at 95 meters |
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