Two updates in one day!
As it was around noon when we arrived in Whitianga, we had plenty of time to check out the town. First stop: the library! Not because we wanted to get some books (we already carry around more than enough of those), but because we were hoping to find some free internet. Unfortunately they didn't have a wireless network, but they had some computers you could use for about half an hour. While Jasper did this, I set about to smash his record in Pinball (the stupid little game you get with every version of windows). We ran into the couple that gave us a ride there, and met them again at the supermarket. When we eventually got back to the Holiday Park, Jasper got busy trying to smash the record I set earlier (and he did) while I tried to get my journal up to date (my non-electronic one).
That evening we made pancakes, we make pancakes a lot, and watched the Big Lebowski on TV. This took a while because advertisers here seem intent on having one minute of commercials for every minute of programming; the movie took about 3-3.5 hours.
The next morning we set out for Hahei where Steffi (one of the girls we travelled around Northland with) was working. We didn't have any cardboard for our sign so we asked the manager of the camp if perhaps they had some for us, he said he did and came back with the tiniest bit of cardboard I'd ever seen. Not wanting to seem ungrateful we took it and thanked him as we made our way to the ferry. Because this ferry was for pedestrians only I was concerned we weren't going to be able to find a ride. When we disembarked on the other side of the river we realised we forgot our cardboard, further increasing my worries about finding a ride. We tried to stop the few cars that came by as we walked along the road but none of them showed any sign of stopping. Hahei was 13km from the ferry, so I figured that if we couldn't find a ride we'd at least be able to walk there and hopefully arrive before sundown. When we got to a cafe there was a man working outside and we decided to ask if he perhaps had some cardboard for us, since the walking was very tiring and the sun was burning holes in our heads (though my hat helped for me). He did, and we quickly made ourselves a sign. We flashed the sign the first car that came past and it stopped on the parking lot a few meters further up the road. Not daring to hope they stopped for us, we figured they were just people going to the beach and we were in no hurry to walk towards them. As we got close however a girl got out of the car and told us it would probably be a tight fit but that she was willing to take us to Hahei. Very relieved we opened the trunk and saw that it was already pretty full. We only managed to fit Jasper's backpack and our smaller bags in there and had to take my guitar and backpack on our laps. When we got to Hahei the girl gave us a quick tour of Hahei saying "Don't blink or you'll miss it". She pointed out to us the place where Steffi was working and then dropped us off at the Holiday Park. We met up with Steffi and headed out to the beach and up the path towards Cathedral Cove. Steffi was glad to see us as she didn't know anyone in the town and was bored to death. However when we told her we wanted to walk towards Cathedral cove straight away her happiness subsided a bit (it was an hour and 20 minutes walking, one way) as she wasn't too fond of walking. We made it to Gemstone Bay after about 15 minutes and decided to rest there a bit and explore. It was a lovely place and amongst the rocks you could find tons of crabs and small fish. I jumped from stone to stone, trying to reach a rock that was a bit off into the sea, and every time I jumped I heard something fall into the water. It took a while before I saw what was causing the sounds; everytime I approached the hiding place of crab, and it saw me coming, it would release its grip on the rock and fall into the water. After this discovery I suddenly noticed crabs everywhere I looked, and I even found some sea urchins as the rocks led me further into sea. After a while I decided it was impolite to let the others wait too long and headed back. As me and Steffi didn't bring our cameras we decided that we'd walk to Cathedral Cove some other day. After some shopping in the local mini-market we made dinner and met up with Steffi at her place. She had a house that could fit a family of 5 all to herself and it all looked really nice. The miniature TV seemed a bit out of place though, though that didn't stop us from staring at it.
The following day we headed to Hot water beach where it was apparently possible to find warm water just by digging a small hole on the beach. It was about 5km south of Hahei so me and Jasper figured we could walk it, but Steffi wanted to try hitch-hiking (we weren't sure if this was because she didn't want to walk or because she wanted to experience hitch-hiking) so we let her make a sign and told her to hold it up for passing cars while we walked. She was a bit too shy to try and stop the cars at first, feeling as though it were something to be embarrassed about, but when she finally did hold up the sign, the first car we came across stopped and picked us up (though they nearly left me behind as the woman behind the wheel drove off before I was in the car).
We arrived at Hot water beach earlier than planned (the hot water didn't appear till 2 hours before low tide) and so to pass the time we just dug a giant hole, thinking that maybe once the time was right hot water would start to flow in there. When after an hour there was still no hot water in our pool we asked some guys who did have hot water what they did to get it, and it turned out that it only works if you dig your hole at the right place. After digging holes all over the beach and finding cold water every time we decided to dig our hole in front of the guys who found hot water as there was definitely hot water there. As we started digging and found hot water however, we found out why it was called "Hot water Beach" and not "Warm water beach". The water was steaming, almost boiling, and digging the hole was painful enough, let alone sit in it! Amazed at how long the others had been sitting in this water we asked them how they could possible hold out for so long and they told us the trick was to find the border of the hot water stream and let in some cold water as well. Indeed, after following their advice the water was a lot more tolerable and cool enough to sit in, but still warm enough to let severe sunburn go by unnoticed. When me and Jasper went into the ocean afterwards a man in front of us suddenly called to us exclaiming that there was a stingray in the water. We quickly made our way to him and as we came close we noticed a large shadow moving over the ocean floor. It was a huge stingray swimming around only 5 meters from shore. Staring at it in amazement we followed it out into the ocean, making sure we didn't get too close to its sting.
On our way back to Hahei we took an exit a bit further up the beach, because that way we didn't have to walk as far to reach the road. Though this was a shorter way to the main road, we soon found out that chances of getting a ride along that road were slim to none. The main trick behind hitch-hiking is standing on a placed where you're visible and where cars can stop without problems (the other main trick is probably to try and avoid looking like a hobo) and this road forced us to walk in the grass and there weren't any places for cars to stop at all. So we just continued to walk, occasionally flashing our sign to passing cars, though I figured there was no way we were going to get picked up. After about 15 minutes of walking with sun boiling the sweat off our backs, I suddenly heard Jasper and Steffi yell and as I turned around I saw a car stopped in the middle of the road and Jasper and Steffi were hurrying towards it. We managed to get a ride after all.
That night we had celebratory pancakes. Like I said, we eat pancakes a lot.
We had booked 2 dives for the following day, but we later found out that there was no ATM in town and we didn't have enough cash on us to pay for them. After unsuccessfully trying to pay for it using our bank cards we asked them if we could change it to just 1 dive. They said that we could do that or, if we wanted, they could drive us to an ATM in between dives and let us pay for the second dive after we got the money. Since we weren't really looking forward to travelling with only a small amount of cash on us, we accepted and suited up for our first dive. This was going to be our first dive without guides or instructors and we had to rely solely on each other for navigation and in case of emergency. We were nervous, really nervous.
When we had our wetsuits on, our air supply set up and our fins and masked packed, we climbed into the boat and sat beside the other divers. When we were all aboard the manager of the dive shop pulled us to the beach with his tractor and launched us into the ocean. He got on the boat and steered us to a small bay in the middle of an island. Me and Jasper did our final checks as the other couple jumped into the water, when we made sure everything was as it should be we got into the water with a backroll off the side (since we had only done the Giant Stride way of getting in the water on our other dives this was a bit scary). The dive went without problems despite me being the navigator (Jasper didn’t have a compass) and we saw some amazing stuff. Lots of fish, a huge starfish, a group of small squid and something that looked like a bit white flower floating in the kelp (we aren’t sure what this was and the others didn’t seem to know either, though the manager thought it might have been a migrating anemone). When we were heading back I was a bit worried as I wasn’t sure how far back we had to go. Eventually I thought we might have gone too far and Jasper thought we weren’t even close to the boat yet, but since our air was running low we decided to just head up and see where the boat was. As we slowly swam up to the surface we found that we were only about 5 meters from the boat; we were quite pleased with ourselves.
Before the next dive the wife of the manager quickly took us to Whitianga and we withdrew enough money for the next week or two.
As we were going for the second dive we were a lot more relaxed, even though we went to a different dive spot. This one was basically just a big rock sticking out of the water and the manager told us that the best marine life would be around that rock.This meant we didn't have to worry about navigating as we could just follow the base of the rock all the way around.
We also hired an underwater camera from the store and were eager to test it. We made a few pictures of each other in silly poses which was easy enough, but when we tried to take pictures of fish we found that photography underwater was devilishly hard and the pictures all came out fuzzy. When we were swimming through the kelp I noticed a large crayfish hiding in a crack in the rock and tried to point it out to Jasper, but he wasn’t paying attention to me and just swam on, heading straight for it. When he got close enough I tapped him on the arm and pointed at the crayfish. He couldn’t see it because there was too much kelp in front of it and wondering what I was pointing at swam a bit closer to push the kelp aside. As he did this he came eye to eye with the huge thing and got the biggest scare of his underwater career. When I tried to take a picture of it, I noticed that the batteries were almost flat and sure enough, 5 seconds later the batteries died. No more fuzzy pictures for us. Other things we saw that are worth mentioning are: a lovely little nudibranch, a big school of fish that swam right past us and a funny anemone that was attached to a leaf of kelp.
When our air started to get a bit low I wondered where we were, I had no idea which side of the rock we were on or if we were even still swimming around the same rock, so I decided to go up and see where the boat was; Jasper quickly followed. When we reached the surface I stared straight at the boat, proving once again that I worry too much. After we got down again (which was a bit harder this time because our tanks were now a lot lighter) we swam for about a minute before we came across the anchor and soon after we decided to call it a day. When we explained what happened to the camera the owners were nice enough to give us a refund.
The plan was to walk to cathedral cove afterwards but since we were quite tired (and because you can apparently get decompression sickness, or bent as it’s commonly called, from doing strenuous exercise after diving) we decided to stay one more day and do it another time. Being too tired to cook properly we made some tortellini (they didn’t have anything nice in the store anyway).
The next day we walked up to Cathedral Cove with Steffi, on the way stopping at a nice little bay called “Stingray Bay”. We probably spent the better half of an hour looking around and climbing over rocks and into sea caves. When we eventually reached Cathedral Cove (which wasn’t all it was cracked up to be) we noticed it was already 4 o’ clock and we only had about an hour and a half to get back to the store before it closed (we didn’t have any food) so we headed back at a faster than usual pace, much to the displeasure of Steffi. We made it back in time and, lazy as we are, bought ourselves some more tortellini as well as some chips and beer to celebrate our last night in Hahei with Steffi.
After dinner we went to Steffi's and played some poker and made fun of Steffi as she had sand fly bites all over her arms (poor girl. . .). I also managed to almost double Jasper’s record with pinball (unfortunately the next day it was gone for some reason). Afterwards we said goodbye to Steffi (again. . . ) and went back to our tent. As we were reaching that fine line between sleep and consciousness we were startled by the sound of a siren. We looked at each other, unsure if we were about to be crushed by a tsunami or burned in a fire, or if it was just an alarm meant for the fire brigade somewhere in the distance. We didn’t hear any screaming people so we figured we’d be alright. A few minutes later the siren stopped and we could finally go to sleep.
We wanted to go to Hamilton the next day, but since this was quite far away we decided to just pick some towns on the way there and see how far we’d get.
We got our first ride within minutes, as we were dragging our sore bodies along the road trying to get to the nearest intersection. The guy (an American living in NZ) wasn’t going to Tairua (our first stop) but promised to take us to the exit towards it, where we’d have a much better shot at getting a ride.
We stood there for about 20 minutes when we suddenly heard a claxon being sounded behind us. It was an Australian couple in a campervan that saw us as they drove by and later decided they’d give us a ride and turned back to pick us up. They were really nice to us and drove us even further than Tairua, as we figured we might make it all the way to Hamilton at this pace. We got our next ride as we were still waving goodbye to the Australians. Jasper flashed our (unfinished) sign at the first car that came past, and sure enough, they stopped for us. They were two kiwi girls who lived in Wangamata (our next stop) and though their car was a bit small and we had to sit with almost all our stuff on our laps we were happy and the girls were nice. Once in Wangamata we stopped at a Subway restaurant to eat lunch and make our next sign; to Waihi. The girls told us we’d have to walk for a while to get to an intersection, which was the best spot for hitching a ride to Waihi. As we were walking along, Jasper wanted to make sure we were still going the right way and asked some people at a petrol station. They laughed and said that Waihi was indeed that way, but that it was a long way to walk. 5 seconds later a car stopped for us and took us to Waihi. This time it was a NZ tennis coach. After talking to him for a while we learned he was in a band and had songs that got airtime on the local radio, he let us listen to some of them and we had to confess that they sounded really good.
When we got to Waihi he told us that there was a huge gold mine almost in the middle of the town and drove us there so we could see for ourselves.
When he dropped us off on a road that would take us to Hamilton we found a nice spot to stand and make our sign, and it wasn’t long before we got our next ride. This time they were two students from Hamilton who went to Auckland for a day to celebrate one of their birthdays. They weren’t going through Hamilton unfortunately but they were going to pass by there and told us they knew a place where there were bound to be many people heading to Hamilton. The ride took about an hour and the car was possibly the smallest one yet, having to carry most of our stuff on our laps again our legs were really starting to get sore, and though the guys were really nice we were glad when we could stretch our legs again.
When we made our way to what seemed like a good spot we realised that we didn’t have any cardboard left to make our sign on. Instead we cut off a part of a previous sign that seemed usable still and wrote our destination on there. When it was finished, the writing was so small that we doubted the people driving by could read it. Since we were standing next to a house Jasper decided to go in and ask if they had any cardboard for us. But though they had a friendly dog and two cuddly cats, there was nobody home and we had to find another solution. Since one of our signs was still unfinished and the letters on it were pretty thin, we decided to try and write over them with really thick letters and pray it was readable. The result looked decent enough, and 2 minutes later we had our ride to Hamilton.
At about 5 o’ Clock, after 7 hours and 5 rides we finally arrived in Hamilton. We weren’t really sure what we were going to do there, and every single one of the rides we had that day exclaimed “Why would you want to go there!?” when we explained to them what our final goal was, but at least it was a big city where they would have cheap internet, an ATM and a decent store.
The guy dropped us off at the YWCA because I’d read in my lonely planet they single and double rooms for 25 dollars a person. When we got to the front door we found it was closed and though there was a bell beside it, we were unsure if we should ring it or not. We decided we were probably supposed to ring and a few seconds after we did a big Maori woman with an unfriendly face opened the door, asking us what we wanted. We asked her if it was possible for us to stay the night, she told us she’d check and slammed the door closed again. After she had us check in and responded quite rudely to a few of Jasper’s questions she showed us our rooms. Mine was on the ground floor and Jasper’s on the first. The rooms looked like prison cells, even though they were big enough, but we were glad to sleep in a normal bed again. After dinner we headed into town and went looking for an internet cafe. It took us a while to find one, but when we did the internet proved to be really cheap. On the way back we were startled by police racing by with their sirens on, apparently chasing some guy in a pimped out car.
The next day we packed all our stuff, made our biggest sign yet and started walking towards the exit for Raglan. As we were walking along a van stopped in front of us (we weren’t sure why, because we weren’t using the sign yet) and the guy asked where we were going. He exclaimed that we were going the wrong way, and that we should just throw our stuff in the car and he’d take us to the right exit. When we got out again, we held up our sign and almost immediately managed to get a ride, from a Maori woman this time.
When we got to the campsite in Raglan and pitched our tent we headed to the lounge room to unwind. Here we met 2 Canadian couples who offered to give us a ride to the beach and one of them claimed he was a decent surfer and promised to show us the basics. The next day we hopped in one of their cars, rented some boards (extra big beginner ones for me and Jasper) and headed out to the beach. The water was pretty rough, with mostly whitewash and as the tide came up the waves followed each other so quickly it was really hard to get back to a good spot. Me, Jasper and Mark (one of the Canadians) were too cheap to rent wetsuits and I expected to freeze my ass off, but the water was actually not cold at all. I managed to stand up and catch some whitewash a few times before we decided to head to the next spot.
This spot didn’t have a beach and the waves crashed on rocks so we beginners decided to skip this dance and let Jeff (the other Canadian) go out on his own. He managed to catch some nice waves even though he was pretty freaked out by the big rocks the waves always seemed to push him towards.
Afterwards me, Jasper, Mark and Rachel headed to town to return our boards and get some kebab (though I thought it was more like a tortilla than a kebab). After the kebab Mark asked us if we had some meat pie yet, we hadn’t so we of course had to get one of those too. After the pie we were all craving ice-cream really bad so we of course had to get some of that as well. Mark and Rachel were pretty full and said that they wouldn’t need any dinner that night. When we told them we were making pancakes they laughed, when we told them we were really making pancakes they looked at us with big eyes asking us how we could eat so much. We told them we always eat that much, they wouldn’t believe we eat an entire loaf of bread with the two of us every single morning. I have to say I’m a bit surprised we aren’t humongous by now.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Let Sleeping Gods Lie
That morning we were anxiously awaiting our transport to the Sleeping God canyon. When it arrived we did a quick round of introductions, our fellow adventurers were a Chilean, an Englishman and an Australian couple. Our guides were Connie, who was also from Chilli, and Craig who was a Kiwi (so he was from NZ, he wasn't a bird or a fruit or anything. Not from what we could see anyways.) but who also lived in Chilli for years.
They drove us to Kauearea park, where they kicked us out of the van at the DOC headquarters warning us that this would be the last toilet break for the day. After a race to the bathrooms and everyone was done and ready to go we drove up to a hiking track. Here they equipped us with a wetsuit, helmet, diaper and a non-matching pair of plastic shoes. They told us that the hike would be pretty tough but to keep in mind that every Meter up also meant another Meter down, this was supposed to boost our morale but since I had a pretty good idea of how far we'd go down I also knew how much we had to walk up (I judged it to be between 200 and 300 Meters).
As we sweated our way up the hill we stopped every 20 minutes to let the Australian girl catch up, by the time she caught her breath the Chilean reached us as well and we continued. By the end of our hike the Chilean was on the verge of collapse. Poor guy.
The first abseil was just a baby one and you could almost walk down it, flat as it was and this made it a lot harder than normal. I was the first to go down, and having abseiled a couple of times before I was pretty confident, but as I would soon find out this confidence was unfounded. As I lowered my body into a position perpendicular to the slope, I started to feed my 8 ring some rope, causing me to go down. I took a few steps as I did this and quickly realised I was walking down faster than I was feeding the rope and was now almost vertical again. I quickly pushed a larger amount of rope up and bounced down, almost losing my footing and scampering to the side a bit to regain my balance. Obviously this was too fast, so I tried to go slower and soon found myself standing upright again. It wasn't until the end of this little hill that I managed to find the middle way and come down in a semi-controlled manner.
After this we reached our second abseil which was a bit higher and a lot steeper, and therefore easier. First Craig went down and hooked up a rope along which Connie lowered the bags we carried with us, after the bags were down the way was clear for us. This one went a lot smoother and I started to regain trust in my abseiling. Me and Jasper were the first ones down and as we were waiting for the others Craig pointed to a small ledge halfway up the slope and told us we could jump off there if we wanted. Being two chickens with a fear of heights we of course accepted immediately and scaled up. I was up first and as I stood there looking down my knees started to shake and the only thing going through my mind was "Oh god, that's high!". It was only 6 meters up but it seemed at least five times as high, and on top of that you had to make sure you jumped as far from the ledge as you could or risk hitting the side. After a second or two I mustered all my courage and leaped off as far as I could, instinctively screaming my lungs out. I was so scared that I climbed up and jumped again.
Afterwards was the big abseil, 70 meters down slippery wet rock with water splashing in your face. The slope wasn't completely vertical though, and there was a part in the middle which was almost like a plateau, after which it dropped straight down again creating a sharp edge with the capability of cutting a rope. Because they didn’t want their expensive ropes to get ruined, and also a bit because they didn't want us to die, they put a plastic sheet over the edge and told us to make sure we passed over the plastic on our way down. Jasper went down first, and I quickly followed. Jaspers rope was on my right side and I had to make sure I didn't step over it, or the lines might get entangled, this meant however that I was forced to go down the left side of the slope which seemed to be a lot trickier. After stumbling once or twice on the slippery rock I got to the plastic sheet and carefully made my way over it. When I made it over I looked up to check that my rope was actually over the plastic and not in a position where it could break and send me plummeting to my death. To my horror I saw that the rope wasn't on the sheet but on the hard sharp rock. As visions of a horrible fall flashed before my eyes I urged myself to go down the line as straight as possible and pray that the rope would hold up long enough for me to get down safely. I slowly and carefully made my way down, and just before the end the wall suddenly became surprisingly slippery causing me to lose my footing. They had warned us before we went down about the ability of the rope to act as a sort of rubber band and that the trick was to let your weight rest on it the entire time. Now, as I regained my footing and tried to lean back into my harness I saw what they had meant. When I rested my full weight onto the rope again it stretched, causing me to lean back further than I had planned and I moved down a few steps to get in a better position. In doing so however I took my weight off the rope slightly and immediately the rope pulled me up, in reflex I hugged the wall and moved my feet up again. This time I tried to put my weight on the rope gradually and again the rope stretched, I managed to somewhat keep my position but the stretch and pull of the rope had me feeling like a yo-yo. As I made my way down the last few meters I was glad to have survived that ordeal and made my way over to Jasper. We were standing there waiting for the others and really started to feel the cold, by the time everyone was down there were 6 people shivering from the cold wetness.
As the guides were pulling down the ropes the Australian guy asked, with a big smile on his face, "Where's the food?". And we, expecting he hid the bag somewhere, started to look around to see where he might have taken it, but when we looked at the faces of Craig and Connie and noticed that they had a serious and slightly shocked look on their face. Turns out, we were supposed to carry the bags down the cliff as well, and not just to the edge of it. So, there were now two bags lying up an impossible to climb 70m cliff wall, one of which contained our lunch for that day and the other contained Connie's bag, and also my bag which contained water and my glasses which I brought in case I lost my contacts. Instead of losing my contacts and having to depend on my glasses, I now lost my glasses and had to hope I didn't lose my contacts.
Slightly disheartened we continued to our next obstacle, the big jump. A 12 meter jump (or abseil if you chose not to jump) down into a small natural pool, with the rock face being at an angle meaning you had to jump away from the wall for at least a meter and a half if you didn't want to crash into the face of the cliff. We all stood there a moment or two, taking in the height of the jump trying to figure out why we paid to do this. Matt, the Englishman, was the first one to push reason into a place where it could do no harm and jump down into the cold water. Next up was the Australian couple and after seeing how close the girl came to hitting the rock it didn't get any easier for us to force ourselves off the cliff. After them came Jasper and then I had to bite the dust. As I made my way down to the point from which everyone jumped I could really see how high it was and how far the cliff stretched out into the pool. I stood there until Craig gave me the okay trying to find the best position from which to jump. I had seen how high it was, but it wasn't until I actually jumped that I realised it and it scared the living hell out of me. I swam over to where the others were sanding and waited for the Chilean to come down, he chose to abseil down and so took a bit longer than everyone else.
The next abseil was called “The widow maker” as 20 people had died there in the last few days. Oh no, wait. I’m thinking of something else. It was actually called “The funnel” and Craig assured us that we’d like it, as he rated it the best one on the mountain. The first part was fairly simple but for the last part you had to descend down the middle of the waterfall. The rocks weren’t as slippery as the ones on the 70m descent, but the difficulty with this one was that it was nearly impossibly to see what was under the water and so just had to pray that wherever you were going to place your foot was a good place for it. Obviously I didn’t pray hard enough as within the first few seconds of abseiling through the roar of the water I extended my foot, expecting to find rock instead finding nothing. It came as a bit of a shock to me as I slowly tilted to one side and toppled over. I quickly got up and did the rest of the descent expecting to step in nothingness every time, but making it down in one piece without further problems.
The last part was an abseil with a surprise (though it wasn’t really a surprise to me as the guy we booked the trip at sort of told us already), the surprise was that halfway through the rope ended and you fell down, gliding gently to the other side in what they called a “Flying fox”. The only thing left after this was a 30 minute walk down the river. As one of my shoes was too small and my feet were killing me and I found this to be the hardest part of the trip by far.
When we got back to Thames the first thing me and Jasper did was go to the local supermarket and buy all sorts of sensible food to still our hunger. This may or may not have included: Chocolate, 2 bags of cookies, 1 big tub of ice cream and 7 hot dogs. Before we rode our bikes back to our Holiday park we quickly downed a bar of chocolate each to silence the beast in our stomachs.
The next day we headed back into town to pick up my glasses, as Connie said she’d go back down the hill to pick up the lost bags and that she’d drop my bag off in Thames. We didn’t do much the rest of the day, except for preparing our trip for the next day.
When we packed up our tent the next day the weather was good, and I was feeling confident about finding a ride to Coromandel town. We quickly made our sign in the kitchen and picked up a nice spot on the side of the road. After about 10 minutes we bagged our first ride, it was a rather eccentric and thoroughly British looking fellow who said he wasn’t going all the way to Coromandel but was willing to take us halfway to Tapu. He dropped us off in a very small town which only had one street, which also happened to be the high-way. It took us a bit longer to get our ride this time (about 20-25 minutes) and wouldn’t you know it, the guy who picked us up was an old Dutchman. Though he’d been living in NZ for the last 50 years or so he still spoke perfect Dutch and was very pleased to learn we were Dutch as well. He even stopped the car for us on top of the hill so we could enjoy the view, and when he dropped us off in Coromandel he told us that if we were going to walk to the Kauri tree they had there we should stop by his house and have some tea.
The next day we walked to the Kauri tree, intending to visit him, but unfortunately couldn’t find his house so we just walked back again.
That evening we spoke to a man from Canada as we were watching an episode from I Shouldn’t Be Alive. He said some friends told him New Zealand was a very good place to cycle around in, but when he got here all he found were hills and roads with no space for cyclers at all. He much preferred Holland.
The next morning we both left and he gave us some pins with the flag of his city and country on ‘em as a small gift, which we thought was quite nice of him.
As we were standing by the exit towards Whitianga with all our stuff and our sign ready, the sky was looking very dark and cloudy and it wouldn’t be long before it dropped its watery load on us. When after about 20 minutes we’d only seen about 4 cars go past we were starting to get worried, but then our troubles were over as a small van stopped for us. It belonged to a young German couple (they were 18 and 19) and the back was filled with a bed and their bags, but we somehow managed to squeeze our bags and ourselves in. In our little shelter against the rain they took us all the way to Whitianga, after we had thanked them we set up our tent in the next Holiday Park.
They drove us to Kauearea park, where they kicked us out of the van at the DOC headquarters warning us that this would be the last toilet break for the day. After a race to the bathrooms and everyone was done and ready to go we drove up to a hiking track. Here they equipped us with a wetsuit, helmet, diaper and a non-matching pair of plastic shoes. They told us that the hike would be pretty tough but to keep in mind that every Meter up also meant another Meter down, this was supposed to boost our morale but since I had a pretty good idea of how far we'd go down I also knew how much we had to walk up (I judged it to be between 200 and 300 Meters).
As we sweated our way up the hill we stopped every 20 minutes to let the Australian girl catch up, by the time she caught her breath the Chilean reached us as well and we continued. By the end of our hike the Chilean was on the verge of collapse. Poor guy.
The first abseil was just a baby one and you could almost walk down it, flat as it was and this made it a lot harder than normal. I was the first to go down, and having abseiled a couple of times before I was pretty confident, but as I would soon find out this confidence was unfounded. As I lowered my body into a position perpendicular to the slope, I started to feed my 8 ring some rope, causing me to go down. I took a few steps as I did this and quickly realised I was walking down faster than I was feeding the rope and was now almost vertical again. I quickly pushed a larger amount of rope up and bounced down, almost losing my footing and scampering to the side a bit to regain my balance. Obviously this was too fast, so I tried to go slower and soon found myself standing upright again. It wasn't until the end of this little hill that I managed to find the middle way and come down in a semi-controlled manner.
After this we reached our second abseil which was a bit higher and a lot steeper, and therefore easier. First Craig went down and hooked up a rope along which Connie lowered the bags we carried with us, after the bags were down the way was clear for us. This one went a lot smoother and I started to regain trust in my abseiling. Me and Jasper were the first ones down and as we were waiting for the others Craig pointed to a small ledge halfway up the slope and told us we could jump off there if we wanted. Being two chickens with a fear of heights we of course accepted immediately and scaled up. I was up first and as I stood there looking down my knees started to shake and the only thing going through my mind was "Oh god, that's high!". It was only 6 meters up but it seemed at least five times as high, and on top of that you had to make sure you jumped as far from the ledge as you could or risk hitting the side. After a second or two I mustered all my courage and leaped off as far as I could, instinctively screaming my lungs out. I was so scared that I climbed up and jumped again.
Afterwards was the big abseil, 70 meters down slippery wet rock with water splashing in your face. The slope wasn't completely vertical though, and there was a part in the middle which was almost like a plateau, after which it dropped straight down again creating a sharp edge with the capability of cutting a rope. Because they didn’t want their expensive ropes to get ruined, and also a bit because they didn't want us to die, they put a plastic sheet over the edge and told us to make sure we passed over the plastic on our way down. Jasper went down first, and I quickly followed. Jaspers rope was on my right side and I had to make sure I didn't step over it, or the lines might get entangled, this meant however that I was forced to go down the left side of the slope which seemed to be a lot trickier. After stumbling once or twice on the slippery rock I got to the plastic sheet and carefully made my way over it. When I made it over I looked up to check that my rope was actually over the plastic and not in a position where it could break and send me plummeting to my death. To my horror I saw that the rope wasn't on the sheet but on the hard sharp rock. As visions of a horrible fall flashed before my eyes I urged myself to go down the line as straight as possible and pray that the rope would hold up long enough for me to get down safely. I slowly and carefully made my way down, and just before the end the wall suddenly became surprisingly slippery causing me to lose my footing. They had warned us before we went down about the ability of the rope to act as a sort of rubber band and that the trick was to let your weight rest on it the entire time. Now, as I regained my footing and tried to lean back into my harness I saw what they had meant. When I rested my full weight onto the rope again it stretched, causing me to lean back further than I had planned and I moved down a few steps to get in a better position. In doing so however I took my weight off the rope slightly and immediately the rope pulled me up, in reflex I hugged the wall and moved my feet up again. This time I tried to put my weight on the rope gradually and again the rope stretched, I managed to somewhat keep my position but the stretch and pull of the rope had me feeling like a yo-yo. As I made my way down the last few meters I was glad to have survived that ordeal and made my way over to Jasper. We were standing there waiting for the others and really started to feel the cold, by the time everyone was down there were 6 people shivering from the cold wetness.
As the guides were pulling down the ropes the Australian guy asked, with a big smile on his face, "Where's the food?". And we, expecting he hid the bag somewhere, started to look around to see where he might have taken it, but when we looked at the faces of Craig and Connie and noticed that they had a serious and slightly shocked look on their face. Turns out, we were supposed to carry the bags down the cliff as well, and not just to the edge of it. So, there were now two bags lying up an impossible to climb 70m cliff wall, one of which contained our lunch for that day and the other contained Connie's bag, and also my bag which contained water and my glasses which I brought in case I lost my contacts. Instead of losing my contacts and having to depend on my glasses, I now lost my glasses and had to hope I didn't lose my contacts.
Slightly disheartened we continued to our next obstacle, the big jump. A 12 meter jump (or abseil if you chose not to jump) down into a small natural pool, with the rock face being at an angle meaning you had to jump away from the wall for at least a meter and a half if you didn't want to crash into the face of the cliff. We all stood there a moment or two, taking in the height of the jump trying to figure out why we paid to do this. Matt, the Englishman, was the first one to push reason into a place where it could do no harm and jump down into the cold water. Next up was the Australian couple and after seeing how close the girl came to hitting the rock it didn't get any easier for us to force ourselves off the cliff. After them came Jasper and then I had to bite the dust. As I made my way down to the point from which everyone jumped I could really see how high it was and how far the cliff stretched out into the pool. I stood there until Craig gave me the okay trying to find the best position from which to jump. I had seen how high it was, but it wasn't until I actually jumped that I realised it and it scared the living hell out of me. I swam over to where the others were sanding and waited for the Chilean to come down, he chose to abseil down and so took a bit longer than everyone else.
The next abseil was called “The widow maker” as 20 people had died there in the last few days. Oh no, wait. I’m thinking of something else. It was actually called “The funnel” and Craig assured us that we’d like it, as he rated it the best one on the mountain. The first part was fairly simple but for the last part you had to descend down the middle of the waterfall. The rocks weren’t as slippery as the ones on the 70m descent, but the difficulty with this one was that it was nearly impossibly to see what was under the water and so just had to pray that wherever you were going to place your foot was a good place for it. Obviously I didn’t pray hard enough as within the first few seconds of abseiling through the roar of the water I extended my foot, expecting to find rock instead finding nothing. It came as a bit of a shock to me as I slowly tilted to one side and toppled over. I quickly got up and did the rest of the descent expecting to step in nothingness every time, but making it down in one piece without further problems.
The last part was an abseil with a surprise (though it wasn’t really a surprise to me as the guy we booked the trip at sort of told us already), the surprise was that halfway through the rope ended and you fell down, gliding gently to the other side in what they called a “Flying fox”. The only thing left after this was a 30 minute walk down the river. As one of my shoes was too small and my feet were killing me and I found this to be the hardest part of the trip by far.
When we got back to Thames the first thing me and Jasper did was go to the local supermarket and buy all sorts of sensible food to still our hunger. This may or may not have included: Chocolate, 2 bags of cookies, 1 big tub of ice cream and 7 hot dogs. Before we rode our bikes back to our Holiday park we quickly downed a bar of chocolate each to silence the beast in our stomachs.
The next day we headed back into town to pick up my glasses, as Connie said she’d go back down the hill to pick up the lost bags and that she’d drop my bag off in Thames. We didn’t do much the rest of the day, except for preparing our trip for the next day.
When we packed up our tent the next day the weather was good, and I was feeling confident about finding a ride to Coromandel town. We quickly made our sign in the kitchen and picked up a nice spot on the side of the road. After about 10 minutes we bagged our first ride, it was a rather eccentric and thoroughly British looking fellow who said he wasn’t going all the way to Coromandel but was willing to take us halfway to Tapu. He dropped us off in a very small town which only had one street, which also happened to be the high-way. It took us a bit longer to get our ride this time (about 20-25 minutes) and wouldn’t you know it, the guy who picked us up was an old Dutchman. Though he’d been living in NZ for the last 50 years or so he still spoke perfect Dutch and was very pleased to learn we were Dutch as well. He even stopped the car for us on top of the hill so we could enjoy the view, and when he dropped us off in Coromandel he told us that if we were going to walk to the Kauri tree they had there we should stop by his house and have some tea.
The next day we walked to the Kauri tree, intending to visit him, but unfortunately couldn’t find his house so we just walked back again.
That evening we spoke to a man from Canada as we were watching an episode from I Shouldn’t Be Alive. He said some friends told him New Zealand was a very good place to cycle around in, but when he got here all he found were hills and roads with no space for cyclers at all. He much preferred Holland.
The next morning we both left and he gave us some pins with the flag of his city and country on ‘em as a small gift, which we thought was quite nice of him.
As we were standing by the exit towards Whitianga with all our stuff and our sign ready, the sky was looking very dark and cloudy and it wouldn’t be long before it dropped its watery load on us. When after about 20 minutes we’d only seen about 4 cars go past we were starting to get worried, but then our troubles were over as a small van stopped for us. It belonged to a young German couple (they were 18 and 19) and the back was filled with a bed and their bags, but we somehow managed to squeeze our bags and ourselves in. In our little shelter against the rain they took us all the way to Whitianga, after we had thanked them we set up our tent in the next Holiday Park.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
People are strange
When you're a stranger. . .
(It seems something went horribly wrong last time, hopefully this time it'll work better.)
And so we were in Auckland once more, if only for a few days. We thought we picked a nice hostel but it seemed that in our attempts to steer clear of the party-going crowd we stumbled right into the heart of them. We entered the kitchen on our floor greeted by a man sleeping on the carpet, snoring the loud snore that spoke of a night filled with liquor. The other people in the room were laughing at him quietly, as they watched us enter and nodded their heads in greeting. Our dorm room housed 8 people in rickety bunk beds that swayed back and forth with every movement made. We placed our bags, we have a lot them now, by our beds as best we could and headed off to the store for supplies. 8 Grocery bags later, we made dinner and headed to our favourite internet cafe, mildly disappointed that our regular cashier wasn’t there. When we got out again day had turned to night and we headed back. With the lounge outside our room empty and most of the beds already filled we expected no disturbances and prepared for a good night sleep. About 30 minutes later I was awoken by an intensive argument between two guys who were bragging about how they didn’t really care for rugby, but were still pretty good at it. As the argument went on it was crystal clear that they both cared a great deal about rugby, but for some reason were afraid to admit it. I had plenty of time to wonder about this as the argument dragged on for quite a while and at a volume so high even the people in the reception 4 stories below us must have heard it.
The next day was shop till you drop day, which meant we visited 4 stores before we had to stop at a Subway© to recover. The result: 1 new camera, 2 new books for Jasper and some pegs for our tent. We then set forth on the perilous Journey to Mt. Eden which would take us through the treacherous lands of St. Albert park and Auckland Domain. 1 Hour and many adventures later we ascended the hill unscathed and victoriously. As we pondered our journey and the many perils we faced and enemies we conquered, a bus pulled up and when it opened its doors a flood of Chinese came pouring out, all armed to the teeth with cameras. We set there gazing at them in amazement for a minute or two, when another bus pulled up releasing from its seat covered insides a horde of backpacking tourists (we of course are far superior to this group *hides camera*). As the Chinese tourists made way, the backpackers arranged themselves along the edge of the hill. After they’d all taken the exact same photo, they were immediately herded back into the bus and driven off to the next amazing sight.
After we felt we’d taken in as much of Mt. Eden’s glory as we could possibly handle we walked back taking a few shortcuts on the way (read: running down the hill numerous times). After a few minutes of walking we couldn’t find where we were on the puzzle of maps in my Lonely Planet and I whipped out the trusty compass. Who would bring a compass into the city you ask? Well, I would of course! And so, looking idiots we checked our compass and found that we’d descended the hill on the wrong side and were going completely in the wrong direction. After walking on a few roads that eventually proved to be blocked by natural obstacles (high-ways, shopping malls, etc.) we made it to what was sort of the right direction. But elk nadeel heb z’n voordeel, and so we got to see a lot more of Auckland than we originally planned and we even ran into a store that sold the sim-card I was after!
That evening we met up with Tatjana and Steffi again and went out for a few beers. Well, we met up with Steffi. Tatjana and Zumina (or something like that) were 1.5 hours late and met up with us at the bar.
The bar was nice and quiet and served good beer, and very big portions of fries, unfortunately because it was Monday they also closed very early and we were forced to move to another bar. Eventually Tatjana led us to another bar that had live music. The music was nice, though the singer couldn't seem to remember whole songs, and sometimes just played the first verse twice. It was a bit hard to talk so we just played some card games, one of which involved recognizing cards fast which was made extra difficult due to the fact that all the lighting was red and the red cards were almost impossible to read.
Eventually me, Jasper and Steffi called it a night and said goodbye to Tatjana and Zumina.
The next day was filled with a large amount of nothing that kept us entertained for hours, the evening was filled with the same amount of nothing.
The day after that we took the bus to Thames in the Coromandel peninsula. We arrived at the bus platform at 1:05 (we were supposed to assemble at 1:00 and the bus left at 1:15) and our tardiness seemed to cause a fair bit of annoyance to the bus driver, even though we figured we were still well on time.
After about one and a half hours of driving the bus driver stopped somewhere by the side of the road and announced he had to go back to Bombay (Bombay in New Zealand that is). He didn't give us a reason or anything and we could only hope we'd get to Thames before dinner time. When we finally arrived in Thames it was about 4 PM, 1.5 hours later than planned. We had a Holiday park in mind that was about 3km from Thames and we figured we'd be able to walk that, but just to be sure we asked the people at the i-Center if it was within walking distance. This resulted in the girl behind the desk immediately calling the Park to ask if they could come pick us up, which they could.
Of course it was raining quite heavily when we wanted to pitch our tent, so we were forced to do it in record time. We managed to wipe everything relatively dry, after the tent was up, using our dishcloth so we didn’t have a repeat of last time. The park itself seemed nice enough, it had a pool, a clean kitchen (though their cutlery set consisted of two forks and nothing else) and a pretty sweet lounge with TV and a bookcase full of books. Since I had finished my book (the one that got wet) I was looking for one to replace it with, and I finally settled for War and Peace by Tolstoy, even though the book was huge and weighed a ton.
The next day we headed into town to buy groceries and check out the local stores. I ended up buying a hat, and Jasper bought a netbook, which he got down to a fair price after a splendid display of haggling (I have a wife and three kids to feed!).
We also booked our canyon trip to the sleeping god mountain, which was supposed to be one of the best of New Zealand.
(It seems something went horribly wrong last time, hopefully this time it'll work better.)
And so we were in Auckland once more, if only for a few days. We thought we picked a nice hostel but it seemed that in our attempts to steer clear of the party-going crowd we stumbled right into the heart of them. We entered the kitchen on our floor greeted by a man sleeping on the carpet, snoring the loud snore that spoke of a night filled with liquor. The other people in the room were laughing at him quietly, as they watched us enter and nodded their heads in greeting. Our dorm room housed 8 people in rickety bunk beds that swayed back and forth with every movement made. We placed our bags, we have a lot them now, by our beds as best we could and headed off to the store for supplies. 8 Grocery bags later, we made dinner and headed to our favourite internet cafe, mildly disappointed that our regular cashier wasn’t there. When we got out again day had turned to night and we headed back. With the lounge outside our room empty and most of the beds already filled we expected no disturbances and prepared for a good night sleep. About 30 minutes later I was awoken by an intensive argument between two guys who were bragging about how they didn’t really care for rugby, but were still pretty good at it. As the argument went on it was crystal clear that they both cared a great deal about rugby, but for some reason were afraid to admit it. I had plenty of time to wonder about this as the argument dragged on for quite a while and at a volume so high even the people in the reception 4 stories below us must have heard it.
The next day was shop till you drop day, which meant we visited 4 stores before we had to stop at a Subway© to recover. The result: 1 new camera, 2 new books for Jasper and some pegs for our tent. We then set forth on the perilous Journey to Mt. Eden which would take us through the treacherous lands of St. Albert park and Auckland Domain. 1 Hour and many adventures later we ascended the hill unscathed and victoriously. As we pondered our journey and the many perils we faced and enemies we conquered, a bus pulled up and when it opened its doors a flood of Chinese came pouring out, all armed to the teeth with cameras. We set there gazing at them in amazement for a minute or two, when another bus pulled up releasing from its seat covered insides a horde of backpacking tourists (we of course are far superior to this group *hides camera*). As the Chinese tourists made way, the backpackers arranged themselves along the edge of the hill. After they’d all taken the exact same photo, they were immediately herded back into the bus and driven off to the next amazing sight.
After we felt we’d taken in as much of Mt. Eden’s glory as we could possibly handle we walked back taking a few shortcuts on the way (read: running down the hill numerous times). After a few minutes of walking we couldn’t find where we were on the puzzle of maps in my Lonely Planet and I whipped out the trusty compass. Who would bring a compass into the city you ask? Well, I would of course! And so, looking idiots we checked our compass and found that we’d descended the hill on the wrong side and were going completely in the wrong direction. After walking on a few roads that eventually proved to be blocked by natural obstacles (high-ways, shopping malls, etc.) we made it to what was sort of the right direction. But elk nadeel heb z’n voordeel, and so we got to see a lot more of Auckland than we originally planned and we even ran into a store that sold the sim-card I was after!
That evening we met up with Tatjana and Steffi again and went out for a few beers. Well, we met up with Steffi. Tatjana and Zumina (or something like that) were 1.5 hours late and met up with us at the bar.
The bar was nice and quiet and served good beer, and very big portions of fries, unfortunately because it was Monday they also closed very early and we were forced to move to another bar. Eventually Tatjana led us to another bar that had live music. The music was nice, though the singer couldn't seem to remember whole songs, and sometimes just played the first verse twice. It was a bit hard to talk so we just played some card games, one of which involved recognizing cards fast which was made extra difficult due to the fact that all the lighting was red and the red cards were almost impossible to read.
Eventually me, Jasper and Steffi called it a night and said goodbye to Tatjana and Zumina.
The next day was filled with a large amount of nothing that kept us entertained for hours, the evening was filled with the same amount of nothing.
The day after that we took the bus to Thames in the Coromandel peninsula. We arrived at the bus platform at 1:05 (we were supposed to assemble at 1:00 and the bus left at 1:15) and our tardiness seemed to cause a fair bit of annoyance to the bus driver, even though we figured we were still well on time.
After about one and a half hours of driving the bus driver stopped somewhere by the side of the road and announced he had to go back to Bombay (Bombay in New Zealand that is). He didn't give us a reason or anything and we could only hope we'd get to Thames before dinner time. When we finally arrived in Thames it was about 4 PM, 1.5 hours later than planned. We had a Holiday park in mind that was about 3km from Thames and we figured we'd be able to walk that, but just to be sure we asked the people at the i-Center if it was within walking distance. This resulted in the girl behind the desk immediately calling the Park to ask if they could come pick us up, which they could.
Of course it was raining quite heavily when we wanted to pitch our tent, so we were forced to do it in record time. We managed to wipe everything relatively dry, after the tent was up, using our dishcloth so we didn’t have a repeat of last time. The park itself seemed nice enough, it had a pool, a clean kitchen (though their cutlery set consisted of two forks and nothing else) and a pretty sweet lounge with TV and a bookcase full of books. Since I had finished my book (the one that got wet) I was looking for one to replace it with, and I finally settled for War and Peace by Tolstoy, even though the book was huge and weighed a ton.
The next day we headed into town to buy groceries and check out the local stores. I ended up buying a hat, and Jasper bought a netbook, which he got down to a fair price after a splendid display of haggling (I have a wife and three kids to feed!).
We also booked our canyon trip to the sleeping god mountain, which was supposed to be one of the best of New Zealand.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
End of a Chapter, and back to the beginning.
Our vibrations were getting nasty. But why? Was there no communication in this car? Had we deteriorated to the level of dumb beasts?
Waves of disappointment washed over me as Tatjana told us that she didn’t want to go with the other girls she found, and offered us a ride to Kaitaia. After a short discussion with Jasper, who wanted to go with her, we accepted. With freedom nearly in my grasp the jail door slammed shut in my face. Barely hiding my disappointment I got in the van and prayed we could get there without troubles.
As we were moving I shut down nearly all systems, content to stare out of the window without thoughts, hopefully avoiding anything from annoying me. On the brink of my consciousness I heard Tatjana announced she was stopping in Kerikeri to get a new tire, though she did not know the way and we had to tell her where to go. Fortunately Jasper took it upon himself to read the directions, and he soon found out she was just as capable of following directions as a deaf chimpanzee, and agitation started to slowly creep into his voice. As he was on the point of screaming her in the face to turn right we arrived at Kerikeri and passed numerous tire shops. Not trying to understand her anymore we just let her drive past, it was obvious she had her sights set on a shop from heaven where the tires are free and made of gold. When we finally got to this shop, it turned out that they didn’t sell tires at all and just did routine checks on cars. Despite already going to a car shop in Paihia she went in and asked for their opinion on the tire, and they had some disturbing news. The tire had to be replaced. As this news obviously shocked Tatjana, she needed a few minutes to fully grasp the situation, which she did by laying over the steering wheel and remaining silent and motionless. As this wasn’t the first time she did this, I wasn’t impressed and neither was Steffi who had obviously experienced this even more than we had. We all continued to stare out of the window until Tatjana woke from her catatonic state and decided she would leave the car there and walk off in search of a new tire. For a short while at least we had some relief and expressed our annoyance to each other.
When she returned I quickly went back to my vegetative state, unwilling to deal with any problems she had undoubtedly found. She then moaned a bit about having to buy a new tire and how expensive it was. I tried to feel sympathy for her, I really did, but I had used up all my sympathy in the days before when she ignored any advice given to her to resolve her situation and she seemed determined to do everything in her power to make life more difficult for herself. So instead, I just looked out of the window and waited for her to do whatever it was she wanted to do. And after being in Kerikeri for about 60 minutes we finally got a new tire on the car and headed towards our next destination. We had decided earlier that we were going to a small town close to Kaitaia, called Ahipara, because there were no Hostels in Kaitaia. Still Tatjana made a fuss about this and insisted we go to Kaitaia anyway and try to find a motel. After explaining to her we didn’t have a money tree with us, and were more than a bit reluctant to blow a ton on staying in a crappy motel, she finally agreed we could go to Ahipara.
2 hours and a lot of ignored directions later we arrived at Ahipara holiday park. After setting up the tent we made dinner and upon seeing the stickers for ice-cream at the reception we joyously rang the bell, the thought of the ice cold sweetness lifting up our spirits. Unfortunately the guy behind the desk told us they didn’t have ice-cream yet, as that was more a thing for the summer, but we could probably buy some ice-cream in the shop close by if we hurried. So we set out immediately, and after about 20 minutes of walking (and waiting for the girls as they pampered every single dog in the neighbourhood, and there were a lot of those) we still didn’t see a shop. We figured we somehow went the wrong way and headed back, and turned into Kaka Street to go to the beach. The water was nice so we took off our shows and played around in it for a while until it went dark and we figured we’d best head back.
Once we got back to the Holiday Park, it was only 9 o’ Clock so we decided to watch TV for a while and sit next to the fireplace which gave off a nice glow. When the guy from the reception stopped by to close the office he asked if we managed to find the shop. When we told him we turned back at the fire station he said we only had to walk about 10 meters further to reach the store. He then went to close the office, and when he came back he was holding 4 cups of ice-cream which he offered to us for free. Shocked by his generosity it took us a few moments before we accepted and thanked him repeatedly. While we ate it we decided we had to give him something in return, and because we were planning to make a huge load of pancakes the next day I suggested we give him some pancakes in return.
The next day we headed out to the northern tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga, and rented a few sand boards for the Giant dunes they had along the way. After an hour or two of driving we reached a place called Te Paki, where sandy giants resided. We picked up our board (which was actually more like a flexible sled) and took off to climb the dunes. The climb up was gruelling and the sun burned heavy on our heads, but the view alone was reward enough, the border between the land and the sand was absolute with a lush forest transferring into a sandy desert in a matter of meters.
The actual sand boarding itself turned out be a lot trickier than we’d thought it would be, and our attempts to soar down the mountains with the speed of sound were shattered when we couldn’t even reach speeds exceeding 1 mile an hour. Determined to go down in a spectacular way me and Jasper ditched the boards and decided to roll down. The sand was soft enough for it not to hurt and the dunes high enough to make us dizzy beyond belief, achieving a state of nausea rivalling the one after a good night of drinking. Through some kind of miracle we managed to keep our breakfast in our stomachs where it belonged, but decided to lay down and rest for a few minutes nonetheless.
After the storm in my stomach was calmed to a mild breeze, I decided to give the boarding another go smearing as much of the beeswax on the board as I could manage. I climbed up a short way and gave it a try, and incredibly I actually managed to pick up some speed. Rejuvenated by this small victory I set out to conquer the dune once more. Once I reached the top of the hill I asked Jasper if he could make a movie of my descent. He informed me he was just stung by a bee, and if I could hurry it up please. I grabbed my plastic slab and soared down the dune, sand blasting in my face as I managed to reach speeds of up to 2 miles an hour. When I finally reached the bottom I rushed over to aid Jasper who was obviously in pain. He asked me to see if there was still a stinger in his back, and when I looked I saw the biggest stinger I’d ever seen, so big it must have almost pierced him completely. I gripped it with two hands and placed my foot on Jasper’s back. “This might sting a little” I said as I ushered every ounce of my strength to yank the thing out. We quickly patched up the wound before he bled to death, and rushed him back to the car. Steffi had to giggle a little over the whole affair. (Note: this story may have been exaggerated a slight bit).
After waiting for Tatjana to finish her attempts at sand boarding we headed towards Cape Reinga, where the joining of two oceans could be seen in a grand display of foam and whirlpools. At the lighthouse we waited for Tatjana to join us, as she’s always the slowest of us by far. And after she’d been there a few minutes we suggested we should head back if we wanted to get to the store in time. Tatjana said we would probably be too late anyway and should visit one of the smaller (more expensive) shops we saw on the way, and that therefore there was no need to hurry. Still, we wanted to go back and told her so. She seemed to get annoyed with us and insisted we were in too much of a hurry, and we had to relax more. We told her “whatever, we’ll be waiting in the van” and waited for her in the van. After 20 minutes there was still no sign of her and I vowed that if she made us wait for more than 30 minutes I’d never travel with her again. 50 minutes later she finally showed up with some bullshit excuse (pardon my language) that she’d tripped or something. The mood in the van was grim as we rode back, past all the shops we were supposed to stop at for food. When we reached Kaitaia it was around 8:30 and because the big stores were sometimes open till 9, we decided to stop at one and pray it was still open. It wasn’t. It closed at 8, meaning that if a certain person hadn’t made us wait for 50 minutes we’d be here in time to get supplies for pancakes. As it stood now we didn’t have anything, me and Jasper didn’t even have breakfast for the next day. We decided to stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken and had a sloppy weird tasting burger. KFC was not the Fast Food chain of our choice, but beggars can’t be choosers.
When we got back the gate to the Holiday Park was closed (it closed at 9) and the only reason we managed to get in was because the camper driving in front of us also went to the holiday park and made prior arrangements to have the gate opened for them. Then next morning me and jasper had to walk to the store to buy some bread and we also wanted to buy something for the reception guy as thanks for the ice cream. The bread they had was horrible, but we had no other choice, and as a present we bought the guy a tub of ice cream.
Despite my vow to not travel with her anymore, the others still wanted to continue with her as they wanted to visit the Kauri forests arguing that they were hard to reach by bus or through hitch-hiking. So we set out once more and this time she almost managed to topple the van on the windy road. She drove too fast through the corners, too close to the edge of the road and didn’t take the wetness of the road into consideration. So that eventually the car slipped to the left, she corrected to the right, the car slipped to the right and almost toppled. All she could say was “woops” and all we could do was stare at each other as our hearts pounded.
When we got to the forest and the DOC campsite we picked, the girls deemed it unworthy of them staying there even though it had a kitchen, hot showers and toilets. Being so fed up with them we were willing to risk getting stranded there for the sake of being rid of her, and flat out told her that we were staying there and that if she wanted to continue that we’d have no problems with that. But of course they didn’t know where to stay if not there and didn’t want to split the gas two ways, so they stayed as well.
That night we prepared to venture into the forest, flashlights at the ready and raincoats fastened to ward off the rain that kept coming down without end.
I heard many sounds in the forest that night, some belonged to birds, most to my companions and one to the giant snail I accidentally stepped on. Though night may not seem like the best time to venture through a forest, the path was clear enough and the forest had a soothing calmness over it. Though I was ever weary for sounds that might signal a kiwi bird being close by I only heard one cry that may or may not have belonged to one. Still, the trip through the forest was well worth it, with old logs infested with glow worms and the giant Kauri trees even more impressive rising up out of the darkness. Suddenly Steffi whispered to me she spotted something that looked like a red light in the distance, and after looking carefully I spotted a small red light piercing the darkness as if it were the eye of some metallic predator. As we were all standing there looking at the light in silence we noticed an alarm off in the distance, and as we walked further along the path the alarm grew louder. The angry electronic hunting call, belonging to the angry red eye we saw earlier, seemed to warn us to stay away and lure us closer at the same time. Though we knew it was probably nothing we decided to head back along the path lest we get lost.
As I exited our sleeping area the following morning I emerged in waterworld, our bags floating in a sea of rain water and our cooking supplies drowning in a pool of mud. The loss of my book hurt me the most and I spent the rest of the day in mourning. The others decided we were to go to Bayleys beach so I got in the van and attempted to dry my. An hour or so later we arrived at Bayleys beach. As I got out the weather was beautiful and the hot rays of the sun did wonders for my mood. After we’d set up our tent and had some lunch in our stomachs we headed out to the beach, with the lady behind the reception warning us about the dangerous and unpredictable tides and rip currents that claim at least 1 life per year.
When we reached the beach we saw what she meant, the sea was a lot rougher than anything we were used to back in Europe and you only had to wade into the water for a meter or two to feel the strong push and pull of the sea. After playing around in the sea for an hour or two we relaxed on the beach and explored the dunes. The following day Tatjana wanted to go to the library for some free internet, but once we got there it turned out the library closed early on Saturday and we were too late. We spent the rest of the day doing nothing.
The next day we headed to Auckland and only had to deal with the drama once more. While driving past one of the many, many road work sites a small rock hit the windshield and created a small star break. This seemed to be enough for Tatjana to pull over and lay over the steering wheel some more. After about 15 minutes of her and Steffi talking to each other in German we continued to Auckland where they finally dropped us off at our hostel.
We were with two once more.
Waves of disappointment washed over me as Tatjana told us that she didn’t want to go with the other girls she found, and offered us a ride to Kaitaia. After a short discussion with Jasper, who wanted to go with her, we accepted. With freedom nearly in my grasp the jail door slammed shut in my face. Barely hiding my disappointment I got in the van and prayed we could get there without troubles.
As we were moving I shut down nearly all systems, content to stare out of the window without thoughts, hopefully avoiding anything from annoying me. On the brink of my consciousness I heard Tatjana announced she was stopping in Kerikeri to get a new tire, though she did not know the way and we had to tell her where to go. Fortunately Jasper took it upon himself to read the directions, and he soon found out she was just as capable of following directions as a deaf chimpanzee, and agitation started to slowly creep into his voice. As he was on the point of screaming her in the face to turn right we arrived at Kerikeri and passed numerous tire shops. Not trying to understand her anymore we just let her drive past, it was obvious she had her sights set on a shop from heaven where the tires are free and made of gold. When we finally got to this shop, it turned out that they didn’t sell tires at all and just did routine checks on cars. Despite already going to a car shop in Paihia she went in and asked for their opinion on the tire, and they had some disturbing news. The tire had to be replaced. As this news obviously shocked Tatjana, she needed a few minutes to fully grasp the situation, which she did by laying over the steering wheel and remaining silent and motionless. As this wasn’t the first time she did this, I wasn’t impressed and neither was Steffi who had obviously experienced this even more than we had. We all continued to stare out of the window until Tatjana woke from her catatonic state and decided she would leave the car there and walk off in search of a new tire. For a short while at least we had some relief and expressed our annoyance to each other.
When she returned I quickly went back to my vegetative state, unwilling to deal with any problems she had undoubtedly found. She then moaned a bit about having to buy a new tire and how expensive it was. I tried to feel sympathy for her, I really did, but I had used up all my sympathy in the days before when she ignored any advice given to her to resolve her situation and she seemed determined to do everything in her power to make life more difficult for herself. So instead, I just looked out of the window and waited for her to do whatever it was she wanted to do. And after being in Kerikeri for about 60 minutes we finally got a new tire on the car and headed towards our next destination. We had decided earlier that we were going to a small town close to Kaitaia, called Ahipara, because there were no Hostels in Kaitaia. Still Tatjana made a fuss about this and insisted we go to Kaitaia anyway and try to find a motel. After explaining to her we didn’t have a money tree with us, and were more than a bit reluctant to blow a ton on staying in a crappy motel, she finally agreed we could go to Ahipara.
2 hours and a lot of ignored directions later we arrived at Ahipara holiday park. After setting up the tent we made dinner and upon seeing the stickers for ice-cream at the reception we joyously rang the bell, the thought of the ice cold sweetness lifting up our spirits. Unfortunately the guy behind the desk told us they didn’t have ice-cream yet, as that was more a thing for the summer, but we could probably buy some ice-cream in the shop close by if we hurried. So we set out immediately, and after about 20 minutes of walking (and waiting for the girls as they pampered every single dog in the neighbourhood, and there were a lot of those) we still didn’t see a shop. We figured we somehow went the wrong way and headed back, and turned into Kaka Street to go to the beach. The water was nice so we took off our shows and played around in it for a while until it went dark and we figured we’d best head back.
Once we got back to the Holiday Park, it was only 9 o’ Clock so we decided to watch TV for a while and sit next to the fireplace which gave off a nice glow. When the guy from the reception stopped by to close the office he asked if we managed to find the shop. When we told him we turned back at the fire station he said we only had to walk about 10 meters further to reach the store. He then went to close the office, and when he came back he was holding 4 cups of ice-cream which he offered to us for free. Shocked by his generosity it took us a few moments before we accepted and thanked him repeatedly. While we ate it we decided we had to give him something in return, and because we were planning to make a huge load of pancakes the next day I suggested we give him some pancakes in return.
The next day we headed out to the northern tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga, and rented a few sand boards for the Giant dunes they had along the way. After an hour or two of driving we reached a place called Te Paki, where sandy giants resided. We picked up our board (which was actually more like a flexible sled) and took off to climb the dunes. The climb up was gruelling and the sun burned heavy on our heads, but the view alone was reward enough, the border between the land and the sand was absolute with a lush forest transferring into a sandy desert in a matter of meters.
The actual sand boarding itself turned out be a lot trickier than we’d thought it would be, and our attempts to soar down the mountains with the speed of sound were shattered when we couldn’t even reach speeds exceeding 1 mile an hour. Determined to go down in a spectacular way me and Jasper ditched the boards and decided to roll down. The sand was soft enough for it not to hurt and the dunes high enough to make us dizzy beyond belief, achieving a state of nausea rivalling the one after a good night of drinking. Through some kind of miracle we managed to keep our breakfast in our stomachs where it belonged, but decided to lay down and rest for a few minutes nonetheless.
After the storm in my stomach was calmed to a mild breeze, I decided to give the boarding another go smearing as much of the beeswax on the board as I could manage. I climbed up a short way and gave it a try, and incredibly I actually managed to pick up some speed. Rejuvenated by this small victory I set out to conquer the dune once more. Once I reached the top of the hill I asked Jasper if he could make a movie of my descent. He informed me he was just stung by a bee, and if I could hurry it up please. I grabbed my plastic slab and soared down the dune, sand blasting in my face as I managed to reach speeds of up to 2 miles an hour. When I finally reached the bottom I rushed over to aid Jasper who was obviously in pain. He asked me to see if there was still a stinger in his back, and when I looked I saw the biggest stinger I’d ever seen, so big it must have almost pierced him completely. I gripped it with two hands and placed my foot on Jasper’s back. “This might sting a little” I said as I ushered every ounce of my strength to yank the thing out. We quickly patched up the wound before he bled to death, and rushed him back to the car. Steffi had to giggle a little over the whole affair. (Note: this story may have been exaggerated a slight bit).
After waiting for Tatjana to finish her attempts at sand boarding we headed towards Cape Reinga, where the joining of two oceans could be seen in a grand display of foam and whirlpools. At the lighthouse we waited for Tatjana to join us, as she’s always the slowest of us by far. And after she’d been there a few minutes we suggested we should head back if we wanted to get to the store in time. Tatjana said we would probably be too late anyway and should visit one of the smaller (more expensive) shops we saw on the way, and that therefore there was no need to hurry. Still, we wanted to go back and told her so. She seemed to get annoyed with us and insisted we were in too much of a hurry, and we had to relax more. We told her “whatever, we’ll be waiting in the van” and waited for her in the van. After 20 minutes there was still no sign of her and I vowed that if she made us wait for more than 30 minutes I’d never travel with her again. 50 minutes later she finally showed up with some bullshit excuse (pardon my language) that she’d tripped or something. The mood in the van was grim as we rode back, past all the shops we were supposed to stop at for food. When we reached Kaitaia it was around 8:30 and because the big stores were sometimes open till 9, we decided to stop at one and pray it was still open. It wasn’t. It closed at 8, meaning that if a certain person hadn’t made us wait for 50 minutes we’d be here in time to get supplies for pancakes. As it stood now we didn’t have anything, me and Jasper didn’t even have breakfast for the next day. We decided to stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken and had a sloppy weird tasting burger. KFC was not the Fast Food chain of our choice, but beggars can’t be choosers.
When we got back the gate to the Holiday Park was closed (it closed at 9) and the only reason we managed to get in was because the camper driving in front of us also went to the holiday park and made prior arrangements to have the gate opened for them. Then next morning me and jasper had to walk to the store to buy some bread and we also wanted to buy something for the reception guy as thanks for the ice cream. The bread they had was horrible, but we had no other choice, and as a present we bought the guy a tub of ice cream.
Despite my vow to not travel with her anymore, the others still wanted to continue with her as they wanted to visit the Kauri forests arguing that they were hard to reach by bus or through hitch-hiking. So we set out once more and this time she almost managed to topple the van on the windy road. She drove too fast through the corners, too close to the edge of the road and didn’t take the wetness of the road into consideration. So that eventually the car slipped to the left, she corrected to the right, the car slipped to the right and almost toppled. All she could say was “woops” and all we could do was stare at each other as our hearts pounded.
When we got to the forest and the DOC campsite we picked, the girls deemed it unworthy of them staying there even though it had a kitchen, hot showers and toilets. Being so fed up with them we were willing to risk getting stranded there for the sake of being rid of her, and flat out told her that we were staying there and that if she wanted to continue that we’d have no problems with that. But of course they didn’t know where to stay if not there and didn’t want to split the gas two ways, so they stayed as well.
That night we prepared to venture into the forest, flashlights at the ready and raincoats fastened to ward off the rain that kept coming down without end.
I heard many sounds in the forest that night, some belonged to birds, most to my companions and one to the giant snail I accidentally stepped on. Though night may not seem like the best time to venture through a forest, the path was clear enough and the forest had a soothing calmness over it. Though I was ever weary for sounds that might signal a kiwi bird being close by I only heard one cry that may or may not have belonged to one. Still, the trip through the forest was well worth it, with old logs infested with glow worms and the giant Kauri trees even more impressive rising up out of the darkness. Suddenly Steffi whispered to me she spotted something that looked like a red light in the distance, and after looking carefully I spotted a small red light piercing the darkness as if it were the eye of some metallic predator. As we were all standing there looking at the light in silence we noticed an alarm off in the distance, and as we walked further along the path the alarm grew louder. The angry electronic hunting call, belonging to the angry red eye we saw earlier, seemed to warn us to stay away and lure us closer at the same time. Though we knew it was probably nothing we decided to head back along the path lest we get lost.
As I exited our sleeping area the following morning I emerged in waterworld, our bags floating in a sea of rain water and our cooking supplies drowning in a pool of mud. The loss of my book hurt me the most and I spent the rest of the day in mourning. The others decided we were to go to Bayleys beach so I got in the van and attempted to dry my. An hour or so later we arrived at Bayleys beach. As I got out the weather was beautiful and the hot rays of the sun did wonders for my mood. After we’d set up our tent and had some lunch in our stomachs we headed out to the beach, with the lady behind the reception warning us about the dangerous and unpredictable tides and rip currents that claim at least 1 life per year.
When we reached the beach we saw what she meant, the sea was a lot rougher than anything we were used to back in Europe and you only had to wade into the water for a meter or two to feel the strong push and pull of the sea. After playing around in the sea for an hour or two we relaxed on the beach and explored the dunes. The following day Tatjana wanted to go to the library for some free internet, but once we got there it turned out the library closed early on Saturday and we were too late. We spent the rest of the day doing nothing.
The next day we headed to Auckland and only had to deal with the drama once more. While driving past one of the many, many road work sites a small rock hit the windshield and created a small star break. This seemed to be enough for Tatjana to pull over and lay over the steering wheel some more. After about 15 minutes of her and Steffi talking to each other in German we continued to Auckland where they finally dropped us off at our hostel.
We were with two once more.
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Death on wheels
First off I’d like to apologize for forgetting this in my last update, but I feel like I should mention it anyhow.
On our last dive, through the Blue MaoMao Archway, we ran into two divers who were taking pictures of the plants and fish. When they spotted us, one of them beckoned us towards them and asked Julia if she could perhaps take a picture of them (in sign language of course), they turned out to be Japanese (I knew this because I’d seen them earlier on the boat). I must have wasted a lot of air, as I couldn’t stop laughing after thinking that even 40 minutes out to sea and 16m under water you couldn’t escape Japanese tourists asking “You take picture?”.
After our dive course we were exhausted and decided to rest up a few days before continuing north. As it turned out one of the German girls we’d been hanging out with was planning on buying a car the next Monday and she offered to give us a ride, as free rides aren’t always found this easily we accepted and stayed a bit longer. Having nothing to do at the camp itself we decided to go into town that Friday. First we went looking for an internet café, despite me marking one on my map we searched for it for half an hour before Jasper decided it was enough and asked someone. The guy couldn’t think of any internet cafés in the neighbourhood but he knew that the library offered internet, so we headed there, but we found the rate of 4$ an hour a bit expensive and continued looking. When we found a proper internet café it turned out the rates there were 5$ an hour.
After sitting there for 3 hours (updating our blogs takes time. . .) we went in search of a bookstore, which I had also marked on my map, and after half an hour of searching we decided to ask someone again. The woman pointed to a shop 10m from where we stood and sure enough, it was a bookstore, though not the one we were looking for. The books there were pretty expensive and they didn’t have the books we wanted (Jasper was looking for the Dark Tower, and I was looking for Catcher in the Rye) so we decided to look for another store. Two stores down the road we found another book store, and here they had the book Jasper wanted so he bought that, they didn’t have Catcher in the Rye so I bought a book by Raymond E. Feist instead. We also stopped by a music shop to look for a guitar, but because I didn’t bring enough money we decided to come back the next day to buy it.
It turned out that that Saturday was Labour Day or something, and that shops were giving out nice discounts and such, and so if I was lucky I might get a nice discount on my guitar. I didn’t get a discount on my guitar, but they did deduce some of the price for my bag and gave me a free set of strings and a tuning flute (they didn’t have a fork unfortunately). On the way back we happened to come across the bookstore we were looking for that first day, seeing all the cheap second hand books I decided to go in and see if maybe they had the book I was after. After entering the shop turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought, and there were so many books in there I felt like I was in heaven. After digging through the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section for about half an hour (Jasper was making it clear that he was a bit bored by then) I picked up the two sequels to the book I’d bought the day before, and headed to the general fiction section. I quickly went to the S section to look for Salinger, but could only find a book by R Salinger, but no Catcher in the Rye. And then, just as I was about to give up and leave I noticed a little book lying on top of the others. A big smile came to my face as I saw the title: “Catcher in the Rye”. And so with a new guitar and more books than was wise we returned back to our tent.
The next day was pancake day again, this time they were a lot better than the first time, and as we were eating our pancakes as we baked them Tatjana (the German girl who was going to get the car) started bugging us about our promise to take her to Abbey caves, so we decided we’d go that very evening after we were done eating. For some reason me and Jasper eat about twice as much here as we ever did back home so it took us quite a while before we finished, and by this time the kitchen was full with people who’d just arrived. There was one German guy who looked exactly like Eric from “that 70s show” (he even laughed the same) called Andreas, a tiny German girl (she was about 1.50m) called Lisa, and an Israeli guy called Aron. When they heard we were planning to go to the caves they asked if they could tag along, we agreed to let them come but warned them that there was water in the caves and that they should bring swimming gear.
By the time we were all ready to go it was about 9:30 PM and quite dark. The walk was actually quite dangerous, as they have no real sidewalks here and we had to walk on the side of the road almost the entire time. Combine that with the fact that the country has many hills, the roads here are quite windy and there are virtually no lights on the side of the road and you can probably understand why I won’t do that a second time. After an hours walk we arrived at the caves and we changed into our swimming gear (except for Lisa, who didn’t want to get wet). Because we didn’t have the water shoes we had last time we went in barefoot and the descent into the cave was a bit more tricky and painful, but we all got down safely. Lisa came down as well because she waned to see the glow-worms without having to step in water. Jasper, being the gentleman he is, stayed behind with Lisa and I headed on with the others, seeing as I was the only one with a decent light and I had to light the way for the others most of the time. This cave wasn’t particularly long or exciting, but it had a good amount of glow-worms in it, so it was exciting enough. Andreas turned out to be just as reckless as me and was soon climbing on and over all sorts of stuff, and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t follow him every step of the way. When we came to the end about 20 minutes later I was about to turn back when Andreas said he thought he found a way through the boulders and that the cave continued there. After a few minutes of squeezing through tight spaces and climbing over rocks blocking the way we reached the rest of the cave. It was filled with a bit more water than the rest of the cave, it was up to our knees here, and when I waded through them I thought I saw something move under a stone in the water. Andreas saw it as well, and we both thought it was an eel, the others didn’t see it, but I’m still pretty sure it was an eel, though I have no idea how an eel would get to be in the cave or what it survives on. After a few more minutes we reached the end of the cave and emerged in the forest once more. With no real sign of a path through the dense and rocky forest I just yelled Jaspers name a few times to see if he could hear us and was close enough for us to walk to, but he didn’t respond so we decided to walk back through the cave.
Because Aron wasn’t exactly the fastest climber we took a bit longer than expected and by the time we reached Jasper and Lisa they were quite cold and a bit worried. Apparently the wind blowing through the cave sounded like faint shouts coming from deep within the cave, though they realised it was just the wind it unnerved them. Lisa was too cold and tired to go to the second cave, so we just decided to head back and after an hour we reached our campsite, it was around 1:00 AM and Andreas had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for his dive course (the same one we did the week before), I was glad we had all the time of the world.
The next day we did nothing; we just hung out in the lounge and did our laundry.
That Tuesday while Tatjana was off to buy her car we woke up to the sound of rain pouring down on our tent. In all the time we stayed at this campsite it never rained in the morning, except of course for the one day when we want it to be dry. As the rain showed no signs of stopping soon we put on our raincoats and started to break down the tent. Fortunately the owners let us use their barbecue space, which was covered by a roof, to dry and fold up our tent. And, I wouldn’t have expected anything else, as soon as we had packed our tent the rain stopped, the clouds disappeared and the sun shone brightly.
After an hour or two of waiting Tatjana turned up in the van she had bought, it looked nice enough and had 8 seats in it (why she chose to buy a van we still don’t know). It still took about 3 more hours before she had everything packed and ready to go, and before we went on our trip up north she had to stop by the Automobile Association in town. When we were all in the car we were cheerful (Jasper in the front and me and Steffi in the back), when she stalled the car trying to back out we were still cheerful. By the time she got onto the main road and the car felt like a bumper car every time she tried to change a gear we started to get a bit worried. When it turned out that she was not that used to driving a car and almost went down an exit with the lane next to us still filled with cars I had begun to bury myself in the seat, tightening the seatbelt as much as possible (the loose piece of seatbelt we found in the car earlier wasn’t very reassuring either). The hysterical laughter coming from the driver seat along with the frightened shriek form the other passengers every time we almost hit something or someone will haunt me for years to come. Every time me and Jasper exchanged frightened glances I began to doubt whether or not I wanted to go up north with this girl.
Fortunately she got used to the gearbox eventually and the gear changes went a lot smoother. The only other scare was when she tried to back out of a parking place, couldn’t get the car in reverse and nearly crashed into a streetlight (did I mention she doesn’t have any car insurance?), she then stalled the car in the middle of street. After getting back to the holiday park she took another hour or so to pack her remaining stuff and say goodbye to the owners. When we set off, we figured that though she might have some trouble driving through town and crowded streets it would surely get better once we got on the highway (though it’s called a highway I doubt it would rank that high in any other country). We were wrong, for we had not taken into account the immensely hilly and windy road. As we approached the first hill we didn’t suspect a thing, but as we were making our way up the car started to go slower and slower . . . and slower . . . . . and slower until finally she changed into the wrong gear and the car stalled. She quickly put it on hand brake to prevent us from running into the car behind us. After letting the other cars passed, the drivers all with a mixture of amusement and annoyance displayed on their face. As we slowly crept our way up the last part of the hill we realised this was going to be a long and terrifying journey. Steffi grabbed her laptop and provided the soundtrack to our trip, which mainly consisted of songs like “Highway to hell”, “Another one bites the dust”, the theme to the A-team, etc.
After about 2 hours we arrived in Paihia where Tatjana promptly declared she didn’t want to drive anymore because it was too embarrassing, I was more concerned with other matters at this point as I had just found out that the screen of my camera was broken. After Tatjana had cooled down a bit we picked a holiday park to stay and drove there. We didn’t find the park, but we did find a different one and since the owners had only just bought the park they offered us a special deal, we could stay in a cabin with the 4 of us for only 14$ pp per night. The cabins were nice and big and me and Jasper quickly claimed the two beds on the top floor. The mattresses and pillows weren’t too thick or comfortable but it was a lot better than what we were used to in our tent.
The following day we decided to hike to town as there was a track going there which started very close to the park and it stopped quite close to a tourist attraction called the Waitangi Treaty grounds where some kind of treaty between the Maori and English was signed. After walking for 2.5 hours we reached the treaty grounds only to find that cost 20$ to go in. We were prepared to take in some culture that day, but we were not prepared to pay 20$ for it, so we decided to just go into town and head to the store. On the way there we ran into Lisa who we’d left behind in Whangarei.
After doing some extensive shopping (me and Jasper had twice as much as the three girls combined) we ran into a big Maori guy standing outside with some kind of flag, because we were waiting for Lisa and Steffi to come out we asked him about the flag. He told us a whole lot about it, how it was the real flag of New Zealand and how the Maori were oppressed. He was a nice guy, but after his speech we still weren’t sure on what the flag was exactly.
The next day we were going on one of the hiking tracks Lisa picked and was supposed to take about 5 hours. The first part was just along the beach and though it wasn’t really a path it was simple enough to determine where to go. Once we crossed a bridge however the clarity stopped, mainly because our map only showed the path up till that point, and we decided to follow the road as we couldn’t really see a path anywhere. After walking on the road for about half an hour we took a right and entered some suburban neighbourhood, which we figured probably wasn’t the right way. We decided to ask someone who was working in her garden and she didn’t know, but thought that if we followed the road some more we’d probably get there. So we followed the road some more, walking on the edge of the asphalt and getting off the road every time we saw a car. At one point we passed an exit to the right and we took it, hoping it was the right one. Pretty soon however we came across a sign that said “Warning! You are entering 6-shot area! Trespassers will be shot, survivors composted.” So we figured we were probably not heading in the right direction and followed the road some more. When we reached a roadside pub/restaurant we decided to ask again, and again the person we asked wasn’t sure where exactly but thought that if we took the exit just next to the restaurant we’d end up on the track. So we took the exit and entered what seemed to be a forest road, on the sides were some run down caravans which probably belonged to woodcutters there. When we reached the end of the road all we could see were two roads leading up to houses, not knowing what to do next we just decided to see if anyone was home and ask them. Nobody was home.
I did see the road branching off to the north earlier and even though it went the wrong way we decided to climb it (it was pretty steep) and see if it maybe turned the right way later. Once we got to the top there was a beaten up old caravan standing there with a big pickup truck next to it, I could hear movement inside but when I called out nobody answered. After I looked around a bit to see if he was in his improvised garden Jasper spotted a man and called him over. He turned out to be quite friendly (and not the trespasser shooting, shotgun wielding hillbilly I was expecting) but told us he knew of no track and we’d be best off heading back up the road. At this point we just decided to give up and head back, on the way we came through a camp-site and since we were so fed up with walking the dangerous road we asked if they knew a road we could take that wasn’t the main road. Turns out the track we were trying to follow ran along the coast all the way and we were going completely the wrong way since we left the bridge. There was an English girl there who was trying to do the same route we were trying to do but when she heard how difficult it was she decided she’d just walk back with us.
New Zealand is a beautiful country but the infrastructure and walking tracks are complete shite.
Lisa said that it was possible to go into the treaty grounds for free if you showed them your working holiday visa. So we headed there and a friendly Maori woman greeted us, looked at our Visa and let us in for free, with a great deal of annoyance in her voice.
By this point we were too tired to appreciate anything cultural so we raced through all the things that were there. Stopping only when me and Jasper smelled Spekkies (Dutch marshmallows), it turned out to be a flower that was growing there. We promptly decided we’d get a garden with our house later and fill it with these flowers.
That evening Tatjana was very quiet and upon asking what was wrong she said that she was low on cash and that buying the van was a mistake. Not really knowing what to say we all just sat there quietly for what must have been at least 15 minutes, eventually getting up to do the dishes.
I talked to her after the dishes were done and she said she was expecting Steffi to help her pay for the car, even though Steffi told her before she bought it that she wasn’t going to as she would only be there for 3 months. I told her to not think about it too much for now and give it some good thought in the morning.
The next day we headed into town for shopping and because the library had computers with free internet you could use for 30 minutes.
When we were outside the store waiting for Tatjana to come out as well, we suddenly realised that we hadn’t seen her the last 10 minutes we were in there, and when we went in to see if she was still there it turns out she was gone. After standing there not knowing what to do for a few minutes we decided to head to the van and pray it was still there, hopefully with Tatjana in it.
Luckily it was there and Tatjana was in it, but she was seemed pretty down, still not having found an answer to her money problems. She said she wanted to either find a job somewhere or sell the car, to which we didn’t have much to say. Jasper suggested asking the owner of the Holiday Park if he knew where she could get a job, and as he called the cruise operators for the 22hr he asked if they were looking for applicants, and they were. So as we booked the tour he told Tatjana to bring a CV with her so she could give it to the owner of the boat.
The next day the owner of the Park took us to the boat, it was a pretty flat boat with a “Living area” at sea level and the cabins above it.
The first thing on the agenda was a shooting competition, which wasn’t really a competition at all and just consisted of each of us getting 2 shots with a BB-gun at a plastic duck floating behind the boat. We missed both our shots.
We could then fish while we were sailing to our destination, but none of us caught anything. Once we reached our destination and they stopped the boat, one of the crew (one of them was Dutch surprisingly) took our rods, saying “Now we can begin the real fishing”.
Even though it was now “real” fishing nobody caught anything big enough to eat, so dinner consisted of a steak and a sausage with a bunch of vegetables.
After dinner we went kayaking (in the dark), there was a full moon out so it wasn’t as dark as we’d expected. Unfortunately this also meant that the main attracting of the Kayak trip, Fluorescent Algae, was a lot harder to see. I saw them a lot better when I went to bed that night and flushed the toilet while the light was off (it flushes with sea water).
The next morning after our big breakfast we were told to all get ready for snorkelling, which basically meant we had to put on our swimming gear and find a wetsuit (a shorty wetsuit of only 3mm thick, which is small compared to the full suit with two layers of 7mm we had while diving). At first we couldn’t see anything, as the people acted a bit stupid, splashing around and moving as one big group, scaring away all the fish. For this reason me and Jasper separated from the group and swam around one of the crew who was fishing for mussels and sea urchins, and attracted a lot fish. Once we all got so cold we had to get out it was time to cook the mussels, and once we were all dried up we got a taste of sea urchin eggs and a mussel.
Even though neither of us likes sea food we decided to give it a try. Neither of us liked it very much, though the sea urchin wasn’t as bad as the chewy texture of the mussel.
We then headed to one of the islands, which looked like a beautiful tropical island and hung out there for a while.
Afterwards we slowly started to head back to the main land, where the Park owner was waiting to pick us up.
We decided to stay one more day while we decided on where to go next.
The way things are now, me and Jasper are going to Kaitaia and will probably be hitchhiking.
pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%202%20November/
Since my camera is broken I'll refer you to jasper for more pictures:
sterrenjap.waarbenjij.nu
On our last dive, through the Blue MaoMao Archway, we ran into two divers who were taking pictures of the plants and fish. When they spotted us, one of them beckoned us towards them and asked Julia if she could perhaps take a picture of them (in sign language of course), they turned out to be Japanese (I knew this because I’d seen them earlier on the boat). I must have wasted a lot of air, as I couldn’t stop laughing after thinking that even 40 minutes out to sea and 16m under water you couldn’t escape Japanese tourists asking “You take picture?”.
After our dive course we were exhausted and decided to rest up a few days before continuing north. As it turned out one of the German girls we’d been hanging out with was planning on buying a car the next Monday and she offered to give us a ride, as free rides aren’t always found this easily we accepted and stayed a bit longer. Having nothing to do at the camp itself we decided to go into town that Friday. First we went looking for an internet café, despite me marking one on my map we searched for it for half an hour before Jasper decided it was enough and asked someone. The guy couldn’t think of any internet cafés in the neighbourhood but he knew that the library offered internet, so we headed there, but we found the rate of 4$ an hour a bit expensive and continued looking. When we found a proper internet café it turned out the rates there were 5$ an hour.
After sitting there for 3 hours (updating our blogs takes time. . .) we went in search of a bookstore, which I had also marked on my map, and after half an hour of searching we decided to ask someone again. The woman pointed to a shop 10m from where we stood and sure enough, it was a bookstore, though not the one we were looking for. The books there were pretty expensive and they didn’t have the books we wanted (Jasper was looking for the Dark Tower, and I was looking for Catcher in the Rye) so we decided to look for another store. Two stores down the road we found another book store, and here they had the book Jasper wanted so he bought that, they didn’t have Catcher in the Rye so I bought a book by Raymond E. Feist instead. We also stopped by a music shop to look for a guitar, but because I didn’t bring enough money we decided to come back the next day to buy it.
It turned out that that Saturday was Labour Day or something, and that shops were giving out nice discounts and such, and so if I was lucky I might get a nice discount on my guitar. I didn’t get a discount on my guitar, but they did deduce some of the price for my bag and gave me a free set of strings and a tuning flute (they didn’t have a fork unfortunately). On the way back we happened to come across the bookstore we were looking for that first day, seeing all the cheap second hand books I decided to go in and see if maybe they had the book I was after. After entering the shop turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought, and there were so many books in there I felt like I was in heaven. After digging through the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section for about half an hour (Jasper was making it clear that he was a bit bored by then) I picked up the two sequels to the book I’d bought the day before, and headed to the general fiction section. I quickly went to the S section to look for Salinger, but could only find a book by R Salinger, but no Catcher in the Rye. And then, just as I was about to give up and leave I noticed a little book lying on top of the others. A big smile came to my face as I saw the title: “Catcher in the Rye”. And so with a new guitar and more books than was wise we returned back to our tent.
The next day was pancake day again, this time they were a lot better than the first time, and as we were eating our pancakes as we baked them Tatjana (the German girl who was going to get the car) started bugging us about our promise to take her to Abbey caves, so we decided we’d go that very evening after we were done eating. For some reason me and Jasper eat about twice as much here as we ever did back home so it took us quite a while before we finished, and by this time the kitchen was full with people who’d just arrived. There was one German guy who looked exactly like Eric from “that 70s show” (he even laughed the same) called Andreas, a tiny German girl (she was about 1.50m) called Lisa, and an Israeli guy called Aron. When they heard we were planning to go to the caves they asked if they could tag along, we agreed to let them come but warned them that there was water in the caves and that they should bring swimming gear.
By the time we were all ready to go it was about 9:30 PM and quite dark. The walk was actually quite dangerous, as they have no real sidewalks here and we had to walk on the side of the road almost the entire time. Combine that with the fact that the country has many hills, the roads here are quite windy and there are virtually no lights on the side of the road and you can probably understand why I won’t do that a second time. After an hours walk we arrived at the caves and we changed into our swimming gear (except for Lisa, who didn’t want to get wet). Because we didn’t have the water shoes we had last time we went in barefoot and the descent into the cave was a bit more tricky and painful, but we all got down safely. Lisa came down as well because she waned to see the glow-worms without having to step in water. Jasper, being the gentleman he is, stayed behind with Lisa and I headed on with the others, seeing as I was the only one with a decent light and I had to light the way for the others most of the time. This cave wasn’t particularly long or exciting, but it had a good amount of glow-worms in it, so it was exciting enough. Andreas turned out to be just as reckless as me and was soon climbing on and over all sorts of stuff, and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t follow him every step of the way. When we came to the end about 20 minutes later I was about to turn back when Andreas said he thought he found a way through the boulders and that the cave continued there. After a few minutes of squeezing through tight spaces and climbing over rocks blocking the way we reached the rest of the cave. It was filled with a bit more water than the rest of the cave, it was up to our knees here, and when I waded through them I thought I saw something move under a stone in the water. Andreas saw it as well, and we both thought it was an eel, the others didn’t see it, but I’m still pretty sure it was an eel, though I have no idea how an eel would get to be in the cave or what it survives on. After a few more minutes we reached the end of the cave and emerged in the forest once more. With no real sign of a path through the dense and rocky forest I just yelled Jaspers name a few times to see if he could hear us and was close enough for us to walk to, but he didn’t respond so we decided to walk back through the cave.
Because Aron wasn’t exactly the fastest climber we took a bit longer than expected and by the time we reached Jasper and Lisa they were quite cold and a bit worried. Apparently the wind blowing through the cave sounded like faint shouts coming from deep within the cave, though they realised it was just the wind it unnerved them. Lisa was too cold and tired to go to the second cave, so we just decided to head back and after an hour we reached our campsite, it was around 1:00 AM and Andreas had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for his dive course (the same one we did the week before), I was glad we had all the time of the world.
The next day we did nothing; we just hung out in the lounge and did our laundry.
That Tuesday while Tatjana was off to buy her car we woke up to the sound of rain pouring down on our tent. In all the time we stayed at this campsite it never rained in the morning, except of course for the one day when we want it to be dry. As the rain showed no signs of stopping soon we put on our raincoats and started to break down the tent. Fortunately the owners let us use their barbecue space, which was covered by a roof, to dry and fold up our tent. And, I wouldn’t have expected anything else, as soon as we had packed our tent the rain stopped, the clouds disappeared and the sun shone brightly.
After an hour or two of waiting Tatjana turned up in the van she had bought, it looked nice enough and had 8 seats in it (why she chose to buy a van we still don’t know). It still took about 3 more hours before she had everything packed and ready to go, and before we went on our trip up north she had to stop by the Automobile Association in town. When we were all in the car we were cheerful (Jasper in the front and me and Steffi in the back), when she stalled the car trying to back out we were still cheerful. By the time she got onto the main road and the car felt like a bumper car every time she tried to change a gear we started to get a bit worried. When it turned out that she was not that used to driving a car and almost went down an exit with the lane next to us still filled with cars I had begun to bury myself in the seat, tightening the seatbelt as much as possible (the loose piece of seatbelt we found in the car earlier wasn’t very reassuring either). The hysterical laughter coming from the driver seat along with the frightened shriek form the other passengers every time we almost hit something or someone will haunt me for years to come. Every time me and Jasper exchanged frightened glances I began to doubt whether or not I wanted to go up north with this girl.
Fortunately she got used to the gearbox eventually and the gear changes went a lot smoother. The only other scare was when she tried to back out of a parking place, couldn’t get the car in reverse and nearly crashed into a streetlight (did I mention she doesn’t have any car insurance?), she then stalled the car in the middle of street. After getting back to the holiday park she took another hour or so to pack her remaining stuff and say goodbye to the owners. When we set off, we figured that though she might have some trouble driving through town and crowded streets it would surely get better once we got on the highway (though it’s called a highway I doubt it would rank that high in any other country). We were wrong, for we had not taken into account the immensely hilly and windy road. As we approached the first hill we didn’t suspect a thing, but as we were making our way up the car started to go slower and slower . . . and slower . . . . . and slower until finally she changed into the wrong gear and the car stalled. She quickly put it on hand brake to prevent us from running into the car behind us. After letting the other cars passed, the drivers all with a mixture of amusement and annoyance displayed on their face. As we slowly crept our way up the last part of the hill we realised this was going to be a long and terrifying journey. Steffi grabbed her laptop and provided the soundtrack to our trip, which mainly consisted of songs like “Highway to hell”, “Another one bites the dust”, the theme to the A-team, etc.
After about 2 hours we arrived in Paihia where Tatjana promptly declared she didn’t want to drive anymore because it was too embarrassing, I was more concerned with other matters at this point as I had just found out that the screen of my camera was broken. After Tatjana had cooled down a bit we picked a holiday park to stay and drove there. We didn’t find the park, but we did find a different one and since the owners had only just bought the park they offered us a special deal, we could stay in a cabin with the 4 of us for only 14$ pp per night. The cabins were nice and big and me and Jasper quickly claimed the two beds on the top floor. The mattresses and pillows weren’t too thick or comfortable but it was a lot better than what we were used to in our tent.
The following day we decided to hike to town as there was a track going there which started very close to the park and it stopped quite close to a tourist attraction called the Waitangi Treaty grounds where some kind of treaty between the Maori and English was signed. After walking for 2.5 hours we reached the treaty grounds only to find that cost 20$ to go in. We were prepared to take in some culture that day, but we were not prepared to pay 20$ for it, so we decided to just go into town and head to the store. On the way there we ran into Lisa who we’d left behind in Whangarei.
After doing some extensive shopping (me and Jasper had twice as much as the three girls combined) we ran into a big Maori guy standing outside with some kind of flag, because we were waiting for Lisa and Steffi to come out we asked him about the flag. He told us a whole lot about it, how it was the real flag of New Zealand and how the Maori were oppressed. He was a nice guy, but after his speech we still weren’t sure on what the flag was exactly.
The next day we were going on one of the hiking tracks Lisa picked and was supposed to take about 5 hours. The first part was just along the beach and though it wasn’t really a path it was simple enough to determine where to go. Once we crossed a bridge however the clarity stopped, mainly because our map only showed the path up till that point, and we decided to follow the road as we couldn’t really see a path anywhere. After walking on the road for about half an hour we took a right and entered some suburban neighbourhood, which we figured probably wasn’t the right way. We decided to ask someone who was working in her garden and she didn’t know, but thought that if we followed the road some more we’d probably get there. So we followed the road some more, walking on the edge of the asphalt and getting off the road every time we saw a car. At one point we passed an exit to the right and we took it, hoping it was the right one. Pretty soon however we came across a sign that said “Warning! You are entering 6-shot area! Trespassers will be shot, survivors composted.” So we figured we were probably not heading in the right direction and followed the road some more. When we reached a roadside pub/restaurant we decided to ask again, and again the person we asked wasn’t sure where exactly but thought that if we took the exit just next to the restaurant we’d end up on the track. So we took the exit and entered what seemed to be a forest road, on the sides were some run down caravans which probably belonged to woodcutters there. When we reached the end of the road all we could see were two roads leading up to houses, not knowing what to do next we just decided to see if anyone was home and ask them. Nobody was home.
I did see the road branching off to the north earlier and even though it went the wrong way we decided to climb it (it was pretty steep) and see if it maybe turned the right way later. Once we got to the top there was a beaten up old caravan standing there with a big pickup truck next to it, I could hear movement inside but when I called out nobody answered. After I looked around a bit to see if he was in his improvised garden Jasper spotted a man and called him over. He turned out to be quite friendly (and not the trespasser shooting, shotgun wielding hillbilly I was expecting) but told us he knew of no track and we’d be best off heading back up the road. At this point we just decided to give up and head back, on the way we came through a camp-site and since we were so fed up with walking the dangerous road we asked if they knew a road we could take that wasn’t the main road. Turns out the track we were trying to follow ran along the coast all the way and we were going completely the wrong way since we left the bridge. There was an English girl there who was trying to do the same route we were trying to do but when she heard how difficult it was she decided she’d just walk back with us.
New Zealand is a beautiful country but the infrastructure and walking tracks are complete shite.
Lisa said that it was possible to go into the treaty grounds for free if you showed them your working holiday visa. So we headed there and a friendly Maori woman greeted us, looked at our Visa and let us in for free, with a great deal of annoyance in her voice.
By this point we were too tired to appreciate anything cultural so we raced through all the things that were there. Stopping only when me and Jasper smelled Spekkies (Dutch marshmallows), it turned out to be a flower that was growing there. We promptly decided we’d get a garden with our house later and fill it with these flowers.
That evening Tatjana was very quiet and upon asking what was wrong she said that she was low on cash and that buying the van was a mistake. Not really knowing what to say we all just sat there quietly for what must have been at least 15 minutes, eventually getting up to do the dishes.
I talked to her after the dishes were done and she said she was expecting Steffi to help her pay for the car, even though Steffi told her before she bought it that she wasn’t going to as she would only be there for 3 months. I told her to not think about it too much for now and give it some good thought in the morning.
The next day we headed into town for shopping and because the library had computers with free internet you could use for 30 minutes.
When we were outside the store waiting for Tatjana to come out as well, we suddenly realised that we hadn’t seen her the last 10 minutes we were in there, and when we went in to see if she was still there it turns out she was gone. After standing there not knowing what to do for a few minutes we decided to head to the van and pray it was still there, hopefully with Tatjana in it.
Luckily it was there and Tatjana was in it, but she was seemed pretty down, still not having found an answer to her money problems. She said she wanted to either find a job somewhere or sell the car, to which we didn’t have much to say. Jasper suggested asking the owner of the Holiday Park if he knew where she could get a job, and as he called the cruise operators for the 22hr he asked if they were looking for applicants, and they were. So as we booked the tour he told Tatjana to bring a CV with her so she could give it to the owner of the boat.
The next day the owner of the Park took us to the boat, it was a pretty flat boat with a “Living area” at sea level and the cabins above it.
The first thing on the agenda was a shooting competition, which wasn’t really a competition at all and just consisted of each of us getting 2 shots with a BB-gun at a plastic duck floating behind the boat. We missed both our shots.
We could then fish while we were sailing to our destination, but none of us caught anything. Once we reached our destination and they stopped the boat, one of the crew (one of them was Dutch surprisingly) took our rods, saying “Now we can begin the real fishing”.
Even though it was now “real” fishing nobody caught anything big enough to eat, so dinner consisted of a steak and a sausage with a bunch of vegetables.
After dinner we went kayaking (in the dark), there was a full moon out so it wasn’t as dark as we’d expected. Unfortunately this also meant that the main attracting of the Kayak trip, Fluorescent Algae, was a lot harder to see. I saw them a lot better when I went to bed that night and flushed the toilet while the light was off (it flushes with sea water).
The next morning after our big breakfast we were told to all get ready for snorkelling, which basically meant we had to put on our swimming gear and find a wetsuit (a shorty wetsuit of only 3mm thick, which is small compared to the full suit with two layers of 7mm we had while diving). At first we couldn’t see anything, as the people acted a bit stupid, splashing around and moving as one big group, scaring away all the fish. For this reason me and Jasper separated from the group and swam around one of the crew who was fishing for mussels and sea urchins, and attracted a lot fish. Once we all got so cold we had to get out it was time to cook the mussels, and once we were all dried up we got a taste of sea urchin eggs and a mussel.
Even though neither of us likes sea food we decided to give it a try. Neither of us liked it very much, though the sea urchin wasn’t as bad as the chewy texture of the mussel.
We then headed to one of the islands, which looked like a beautiful tropical island and hung out there for a while.
Afterwards we slowly started to head back to the main land, where the Park owner was waiting to pick us up.
We decided to stay one more day while we decided on where to go next.
The way things are now, me and Jasper are going to Kaitaia and will probably be hitchhiking.
pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%202%20November/
Since my camera is broken I'll refer you to jasper for more pictures:
sterrenjap.waarbenjij.nu
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