Kenepuru Sound - Te Mahia Bay (19th March) Day 9

After yesterdays drama (vacuuming water out of the master cabin) now under control, today we were able to relax and do some of yesterdays planned activities today starting with a swim.  However, after Jo watched wave after wave of jellyfish pass the boat yesterday their was some reluctance from her to get into the water.  After much debate (excuses of it being too cold even though she has a wetsuit and I only have a rash shirt) we finally plucked up the courage and jumped in.  Breakfast followed after a much needed hot shower then Jo and Robin went for a kayak around the bay while I typed up my blog from the day before.  On their return we got the brompton bikes out and Robin took us ashore in the dingy.

Our bike ride started with a climb uphill on sealed road and when we got to the top to turn into mistletoe bay it change to gravel. Bromptons are not really suited for gravel roads as they have pretty small wheels but that hasn’t stopped us taking them ‘off road’ before and wasn’t going to stop us today.  The ride to the bay was all downhill so as long as we didn’t attempt to break any downhill speed records it was a lot of fun.  

We were met with a very picturesque Mistletoe Bay and even in these small isolated bays you can usually get a coffee and Mistletoe didn’t disappoint.  First thing we noticed were the eco cups (no wax coating) and grade (1) compostable plastic lids.  On finishing our coffee we looked to dispose of our cups etc and followed the rubbish bin signs only to be met with 7 large bins all in a row.  What was interesting about this was that you had to walk past 6 different recycle bins before you got to dispose of general rubbish.  The idea is that before you dump your rubbish into landfill you have choices to make to recycle.   We met Casey and Sharon (the managers) of the eco village and commended them on their recycle bins and coffee cups.  They explained that they didn’t mind paying a bit extra and losing a bit of margin to look after the environment.  The significant extra cost being freight from the distributors in Auckland $25/500.  There is no excuse for the use on non-enivornmental friendly packaging.   It is available now and we just need to make better choices.  The price premium will quickly disappear with volume sales if every outlet chooses them. This applies to packaging in supermarkets too.  Supermarkets could influence change for better packaging choices, within one year, with the desire to do so that is.  Back to Mistletoe, Casey and Sharon, as part of the eco village camp not only look after the campers but also conduct eco tours for schools.  They have a bottle crusher on site for easy transport of glass and also a worm farm for their waste.  As part of their eco plan and to further educate students they are also looking to implement the planting of vegetables, which the students can eat then replenish by getting the students themselves to plant vegetables for the next school group and so on.  Today they had two college school groups totally 100 students.  Whilst they enjoy doing the eco tours they found that the college students were less engaged than the primary school students who tend to ask lots of really good questions and be generally interested.  They put this down to the teenagers being distractions by social media and rampent hormones - there precise words not mine.

After our slog back up the gravel road (lots of stops) to the sealed road and another fast downhill run to  Te Mahia Lodge where we stopped in at the shop for another coffee and treat for us, a beef and mushroom pie, the owner said they were good and he was not wrong, amazing pie!  Once back on board we headed out for a fish, without success, we even took the tender into the mussel farm to try our luck there but not one single bite!  We gave up on fishing and went into Portage Bay for the evening where we had a quiet relaxing evening.