We travelled from Tauranga today, passing acres of kiwi fruit farms.

Whakatane is where we are now for 3 nights. It seems a good seaside and river resort surrounded by hills and islands nearby in the sea.

We explored a bit and went to the tourist information. There is an active volcano called White Island, 30 miles off shore, that can be seen steaming. You can go by a boat trip and led expedition to view it, but we don’t fancy the trip in open sea again. We watched a video about it.

We drove up high above the town to the view point. It is 360* view and we took lots of pics. We could see White Island. The view is amazing from up there.

Here are a few pics I took of the seaside and surf. I am very happy to be here. Dad and I didn’t visit this area between Whakatane and Gisbourne 3 years ago (we just dropped briefly into Whakatane one afternoon.)

It is still hot and blue skies we’ve been so lucky with the weather.