Untamed Savages

In the drizzling rain two figures walk through the crowd. Foreig as they are, they always seem to walk on the wrong side of the pavement, straight through the crowd of people. Hordes of asian, maori and New Zealand people walk past them with an annoyed look on their face. On they walk, past harbours and past seas. On they walk, through stores and over roads. On they walk, finally to arrive at the local aquarium, where they had sharks and antarctic adventures. Where they have turtles and stingrays. Where they have tropical fish and seahorses. But most importantly, where they have children. Lots and lots of children, swarming around you like a school of fish. The urge to assume the role of shark and consume a few of them was overwhelming, but we already ate half an hour before so we contained it.
Being tired from all the walking and the children, we stopped at McDonalds on the way home to recharge our meat, fat and salt reservoirs.

Also on the way back we stopped by the supermarket and got food for the next two days, hamburgers, carrots and potato for the first and hamburgers (it was a pack of 6), green beans and potatoes for the second. We boiled the carrots and potatoes in one pan and then mashed them into a "mash pot". We didn't have any butter or oil for our hamburgers, but they still turned out decent, especially when you looked at what the rest was making. Compared to all the pasta and tortellini the others were making our meal didn't look too shabby, not too shabby at all.
(It was a bit dry though)

The second day we decided to rest up a bit and buy some camping equipment. We didn't rest much, but we certainly got some equipment.
Because I'd read some mixed opinions about wild camping in NZ, we decided to aks first if it was at all feasible to go hiking into the backcountry and sleep where we want. First we asked someone at the Outdoor supplies store. She said she hadn't really been outside of Auckland much and didn't know, but if we headed out to the other side of town we could ask at the Department of Conservation. Jasper needed a special belt for his walking pants as well though, and for that we had to go to some other store. We found a different Outdoor supplies store just a minute away, they sold a belt for Jasper here. Upon asking them about wildcamping they told us that there were plenty of opportunities to camp in the wild, but that it would be smart to check out the DOC anyway, because they had a map listing all the campings in the area, so that we could stay there should we need to.

After getting the map, we headed back to the first store to get a tent, sleeping mat, cooking supplies and some cutlery. Jasper wanted to test out the tent in the store before buying it, and after staring at the sticks and sails a bit we decided to ask if they maybe had a manual for this particular tent. They didn't, so one of the employees offered to help us set it up. After we tried to get it up a bit we figured it might be best if he went and got some sandbags as substitues for herrings, so we could get the tent upright. All in all I'd say it took us about 30-45 minutes to get that tent set up, but we didn't mind and the guy that helped us didn't seem to mind either. I also wanted to get some rope, but unfortunately they didn't sell it there. The guy that helped us directed us to an army dump store at the other side of town(why is it always on the other side of town?) where they would probably have rope. After walking for about 15 minutes we found the store, where we were promptly asked by a mumbling old man wearing an old navy captains hat if we needed anything (at least I think that's what he asked), we said no and looked around the store for a while. Eventually we got our rope and headed back.

We were pretty tired when we got back to our room and just crashed on our beds and stared at the ceiling for a good half hour. When we finally found the courage to get up we went and cooked our food. Because there weren't enough pans we cooked our potatoes and our green beans in one pan, unfortunately this meant that our potatoes tasted like beans and our beans tasted like potatoes. Fortunately the hamburger still tasted like slightly burned hamburger.
We decided to check out the movie room and watched two movies there. One was "miss pettygrew lives a day" or something like that. It was a moving picture, and that's about all I have to say about that movie. The other was "Bucket List" which was actually pretty good, despite people ramming open the door every 5 minutes to see what movie was playing.

When we headed to bed we found that there was some woman standing outside our window singing horrible old pop songs. Well, I say singing, but maybe screeching is a better word.
She didn't stop till 11:30 pm, according to Reese she was singing for 5 hours straight.
When she finally shut up I fell asleep, and didn't wake up till the next morning.

Despite a decent night's sleep we were both pretty tired and decided to take a rest day (again, but this time for real). We bought some supplies (Baked beans with meat balls in a can, score!) and our bus tickets up till Waipu, from where we will be walking a few miles to uretiti campsite. We're planning on staying there a few days and get used to our tent and sleeping outdoors.

As a final note someone told me that they couldn't figure out how to post a comment because it was in Dutch, hopefully I fixed that now.