brian's place

When we were in Auckland on Saturday, we discovered that there’s an A&P show in Hawke’s Bay this Wednesday through Friday. Jamie’s wanted to go to one for a while, and I was disappointed I missed the Nelson one by a few days earlier this year, so we decided to try to make it to this one. Problem is, we’d planned to spend the holiday weekend on the East Coast, which is pretty far north of Hawke’s Bay. Also, everything gets booked early for the long weekend (Labour Day), so we might be sleeping in the car over the weekend, but we’re taking our chances.

The description of Brian’s Place, a BBH hostel in Tokomaru Bay, caught my eye on the internet – an eco-hostel with fishing, hunting, tramping, etc. overlooking the bay. We hoped they’d have room for us a few days early, and we were lucky. The place definitely has character, as does the owner, Brian. After buying the best fish and chips ever (a huge fillet of ocean-fresh groper and chips with garlic butter, heavy on the garlic) from a little decaying-cinderblock place right on the bay and eating them at the beach and then exploring an old wharf as a possible fishing spot later on, I took a nap for the rest of the afternoon while Jamie chatted with the owner. When I woke up, we hiked through some paddocks to the top of a big hill with a 360-degree view of the bay, farmland, mountains, etc. – and then I was completely exhausted again.

One drawback of the hostel was that it was in such a beautiful area and so laid back that a lot of people got ‘stuck’ there, including one couple with a very loud 1-year-old. It might not have been so loud if they had watched it sometimes, and, for example, not let it fall four to five feet off of the porch into a spiky plant, or if they had told it that tackling a half-blind and grumpy cat (with claws) is not a good idea. But they didn’t, so that is actually what’s motivating us to move along down the road tomorrow rather than staying for the two days we’d planned to stay.