#5: [05-Apr-18]

#4: [04-Mar-13]

#3: [12-Jan-12]

#1: [13-Jan-01]

29-Mar-2007 -- Continued from 39°S 176°E. It was raining heavily. Actually we planned to visit the only active mariner volcano “White Island” from Whatakane. But the weather was not suitable to do the trip; all ships were not able to depart. We were told by the information centre that we would have to wait for a couple of days.

So we spent the night at the Holiday Park Top 10 in Ohope Beach. It was a beautiful long white sand beach, but there were only a few visitors. In the rain and the sea was tumbling.

We were bored to death and we searched thousands of times on the map in order to find a nice place to be visited next. Suddenly we saw that the confluence S38 E177 was so close to our current location with a bee-line distance of only 15.9 km. We decided to visit it.

We started from the Ohope Beach by the break of dawn. There was not much traffic on the road. A shower poured so badly on the windscreen of our car so that we could not see very well in spite of the headlights and windscreen wipers turned on. We drove very carefully.

After a little while we saw a construction site on our left hand side. At this moment the GPS showed a 979m beeline distance to the confluence point. We turned to the left. (Later we picked up that this was the same place where the McKellar family had taken their picture #2, compare with our picture #9: The farmhouse is gone now). A track ended here. A car driver stretched his head out of the window and asked us “Are you looking for someone?”

“No, we just want to visit a point which is not far from here. May we park my car for a while?” I asked.

He had a look around if there was a place to park our car but everywhere the rocks and materials piled up. Finally he pointed into a corner. “But please don’t get in the way of the traffic. Many trucks are working here. ”

We wore rain jackets and took an umbrella with us. The camera and GPS were packed into a plastic bag. We walked along the road for the first 500m. But then the arrow on the GPS pointed straight to the left.

We stood in front of a fence. Behind the fence were some apiaries. Nobody was there, but a small path went ruggedly towards the hill.

We followed the trail. Meter by meter we climbed the hill, from 16m to over 200m altitude. Thanks God the path lead to the top and in the direction to the confluence.

We were sweating. Half way to the summit we saw down, the township was covered by clouds.

We left the path when we got 130m to the confluence point. All around was the primeval forest. For the last 130 meters we spent more time to encircle the confluence than it had taken me to climb the hill, because we had problems of receiving the GPS signals. Finally we only got as close as 16 meters distance to the point due to the vacillation of the GPS. At this time we were soaking wet: from outside it was the rain, from the inside it was the sweat.

CP visit details:

• Time at the confluence: 9:30 a.m.
• Distance to a track: 130 m
• Distance to a road: 593 m
• Topography: on a hill
• Minimal distance according to GPS: 16 m
• Position Accuracy at the CP: 4 m
• GPS height: 217 m
• Vegetation: Deep spruce forest. On the ground grass, ferns and moss.
• Weather: heavy rain, 20° C
• Description of the CP: On the cultivated East Cost of the North Island, on dairy farm land.
• Given Name: The Rainy Query Confluence

Story continues at 36°S 174°E