Around Ruakaka

Ruakaka has a free town map showing the local businesses, and we picked up a copy when we first arrived. Some observations about this map:

• This is pretty much all there is in Ruakaka
• It is very not to scale
• There are a strange number of real estate offices and hair dressers for such a short list

But it's been pretty helpful for getting around. Since most of these small businesses aren't lookupable online, it's really the only way to find some of them.

Yesterday I went to the local dressmaker/tailor (#28) to get some pants hemmed. It wasn't as straightforward as I expected because the business is run out of a house. The mailbox at the road had a "dressmaker" sign but the house did not, so I had to sort of wander around trying to find the right place. Luckily there was a man working in his garage (making wooden toys) who happened to be the dressmaker's husband. Hooray! But she is out golfing...aww. He gave me her card and I went back today and successfully dropped off my pants, but it was certainly a bit of an adventure :)

Last week we realized that we hadn't yet gone up to One Tree Point and the Marsden Cover Marina (on Whangarei Harbour). So we took a drive up there and discovered that there is basically nothing there, except the Mardsen Point Oil Refinery - the only oil refinery in NZ. There is a visitors center, but we figured we don't really need any extra knowledging about oil. Who knows, maybe we will check it out later :)

Anyways, there was some nice views at least, looking out over Whangarei Harbour.

Looking east over Whangarei Harbour from One Tree Point. You can see the oil refinery off in the distance

The sun was really bright...but check out my new hat! :)