After heavy rain passed through during the night we awoke to a beautiful day in Tauranga. Another early start had us enroute to Taupo via Tokoroa for lunch. The trip started off uneventful however as we progressed closer to Taupo the cloud base lowered. As the last aircraft arrived the cloud quickly descended and there was no chance of heading off to Gisborne any time soon.
The Taupo Aero Club hosted a fantastic lunch which soon spread into afternoon tea and then progressed on towards beer o'clock! With the weather giving us faint glimpses of hope that it might soon disperse we stayed away from the bar in the hope that we could still make it to Gisborne for dinner. And a good thing we did! At approximately 5pm we left Taupo direct for Gisborne. What a spectacular flight. We tackled some fairly rugged tiger country and arrived safely in Gisborne some 45 minutes later. A few of the safari teams managed to complete the full safari route from Taupo to Gisborne via Whakatane and around the East Coast past Tokomaru Bay. Obviously this being a longer route than ourselves took this meant some teams did not arrive until fairly close to ECT (when it gets dark).
A Kapa Haka group performance and a unique Camp Oven Dinner hosted by the Gisborne Aero Club topped off a long but enjoyable day.
Off to Masterton tomorrow via Hastings for lunch.
We enjoyed watching about 20 airplanes come in at around 6-6.45 pm. It was so cool. We were glad u had a beautiful blue sky. We imagined that some of the airplanes waggled their wings back to us in greeting as we waved from near the airport.
ReplyDeleteJeanie