Tutukaka, Whangarei, and my new tent

The next morning, Lorena and I got up uber early so we could drive to Tutukaka (yes, I know that's funny...I still giggle when I say it) so she could go scuba diving at Poor Knight's Island.  We packed up and left at 6:30am (!!!) and had another wee road trip to get to the boat by 8:15.  We passed cows on parade, but they didn't cross the road in front of us so we reached Tutukaka without incident.  I dropped her off and went on a wee exploration myself.  I backtracked to Matapouri to explore the Mermaid Pool that Lonely Planet mentioned.  It's supposed to be a gorgeous clear saltwater pool hidden away at the north end of a beach that you reach by following a track in the grass through an "unlikely looking hole in the rock".  So, I put on my swimsuit, got out the camera, and walked along the beach to the north where I could expect a little adventure to a small piece of private, aquatic heaven.  The beach was lovely

the picture on the right shows the path to the mermaid pool

But the "unlikely looking hole in the rock" was blocked.  A couple locals were right behind me and I asked them about the Mermaid Pool.  They said that the caved in area we were staring at was the entrance, but an earthquake had blocked the way back in January.  You can still reach it, but you have to climb up a really steep hill and then climb the steep way back down to get there.  He highly recommended I do it with another person, so instead of hiking to the pool alone, I decided to not be a stupid tourist and took a wee path in the grass to a deserted black rock beach.  It was really stunning and so nice to find my own private beach!

After my brief, and slightly disappointing, foray into the local bush, I drove down to Whangarei to visit the waterfalls and set up the campsite.  I stopped at a lookout point on my way down the coast

And finally arrived at Whangarei Falls.

There were a few trails around the area, so I started on a wee tramp down the river, over a bridge, through a field and stopped to stick my feet in the river

Further along the track in the bush, I found a boardwalk around some old Kauri trees and over an offshoot of the river.  It was a lovely tramp through the bush.

On my way back to the falls, I walked past a couple cows.  I tried to make friends with the one closest to me.  Despite my efforts to be friendly and try to feed him what he was already eating, he got scared and ran away.  Spineless, but cute.

Back at the campsite, I set up my new tent for the first time!

I realize one is supposed to try setting up a tent before they use it... but I'm not exactly a role model for pre-planning :)  Regardless, the tent went up and I think it's cute!

I picked Lorena up from her trip, which was amazing I'm told, and after a lazy dinner at a bar we had a thrilling evening doing laundry at the campsite.  It rained really hard that night and despite a scare in the wee hours of the morning that the car window was open (it wasn't, phew!) we stayed pretty dry.  A few drops got into the tent from the rain fly from getting in and out, but no harm done.  So, hooray for my new tent!  I'm excited to try it out on a true backpacking trip.  Stay tuned for future tenting adventures...

Kerikeri, Cape Reinga, Sand Dunes, 90 Mile Beach and Kiwis!

Our first day in Kerikeri, we decided to do a beach tour.  The weather wasn't completely on our side as it started to rain shortly after we arrived at our first beach, but the views from our wee tour were truly fantastic!

After we drove up the coast and visited a few beaches, we stopped at the Mangonui World Famous Fish Shop that was on a pier sitting in the ocean.  The site was fitting and the food was excellent!  Although... they didn't have any donuts :( 

We got back to the campsite in the early afternoon and decided to do a little food shopping and site seeing in the town before dinner.  The town is about 5 minutes long - yes, that's how long it takes to drive down the main street going slowly.  New Zealand towns tend to be rather small.  You could blink and miss one if you're not careful.  Regardless, we found a cool pottery/art shop that we browsed in for a while.  But the smaller towns tend to close down about 4 or 5pm so we returned to the campsite, had dinner, played some games and hit the sack.

The next day we were up bright and early (read 8:30am) and on the road.  We drove all the way up to the tippy top of the north island: Cape Reinga.  The weather wasn't rainy, but it was a bit foggy/cloudy so our view at the northern tip was limited yet stunning.  We took pictures at the lighthouse and the directions sign.  Lorena was quite happy to see Los Angeles listed there.  I just want to know why NYC isn't listed?!
We walked up the hill and took pictures on the edge...
Then we hiked down to another hill that was a bit closer to the beach.  We tried to get pictures of us on the hill.  Even though it was cloudy, the sun was rather bright and some people (ahemtoddgraham) had problems looking up and opening their eyes...

it was also hard trying to get everyone in the picture...

Back in the car, we started driving south again and pulled over at the giant sand dunes.  So. Cool.

People were sledding down the dunes on beach boogie boards and it looked like a blast.  It also looks a lot steeper when you're at the top getting ready to sled down, head first of course.  We sat at the top and watched several people sled down.  Here's one video from the top...

And here's another video of Graham, Vanessa and I.  We borrowed some boogie boards from some other very nice tourists and climbed back up the big sand dune so we could sled down it.  SO MUCH FUN!!!

  Back in the car again, we kept driving south, and stopped again at 90 Mile Beach.

i love that you can rent a Wicked camper...vanessa does too :)

The sun had come out and it was a lovely day so Graham, Lorena and I got to go swimming!  I tried to teach Lorena how to body surf, but it's been a really long time for me too!  So, we just floundered in the waves a bit with Lorena's waterproof camera.

Vanessa and Laura and I tried to be synchronized cartwheelers...

we weren't exactly successful at the synchronized part...

 Lorena and I tried to relive one of our college ballroom team trips to San Diego...

Back in the car once more, we continued our drive south and back to our campsite, but we had one more stop to make.  Vanessa and Laura's co-worker, Tanya, camps with her family just north of Kerikeri on the ocean, and wild Kiwi birds run rampant around their campsite.  We wanted to see these birds in the wild so we went to go visit them.  Despite the fact that we thought we were already in BFE, we kept driving further and further into nowhere.  We passed paddock after paddock with fewer and fewer houses in between and, naturally, got a little lost.  When we finally met up with Tanya and her sister, they split up into our two cars and directed us into sheep paddocks where we drove up and down and across slightly treacherous looking hills and rough sheep trodden land... in the dark where we couldn't quite see where we were going.  Vanessa's car couldn't quite make it all the way, so we abandoned our cars in the middle of a paddock and walked the rest of the way, trying very hard to avoid the multitude of sheep/cow poo piles.  Their campsite was right on the ocean, at the bottom of a hill and surrounded by the hill so it was nice and sheltered.  We all sat at the picnic table and talked and periodically scanned the hill with a crazy intense flashlight...and we saw kiwis!!  The were running along the ridges of the hill and we followed them with the light.  They're rather funny looking in real life, and rather large!  They look all cute and tiny in all the tourist souvenir depictions, but they're about chicken size.  Still cute though.  On our way back up the hill, we stopped here and there to scan again and we actually saw one about 20 feet away from us!  Here's my iPhone pic... you can kinda see it!

he's facing right - you can barely see his beak

After all that excitement, we made it safely out of the sheep paddocks in the dark without hitting any sheep, busting any tires, or scraping the undercarriages of the cars too badly.  Good times, but a long day!!

Boxing Day Cricket and a West Coast Road Trip

Sunday, the 26th, aka Boxing Day, we went to our first 20/20.  That's a cricket match.  20 overs for each team.  It's making sense to me now, but I'm not even going to try to explain in a written format.  Just know that it's the shortest of the cricket matches you can watch.  A full test match lasts for 5 days, a one day test is 50 overs for each team, and then there's the 20/20 which lasts about 3 hours.  For those of you with an attention span of a newt, watch the highlights on the news.

Todd, Laura, Vanessa, Graham and I went to Eden Park (where rugby matches will be played in about 8 months!) and found that our seats were SUPER close to the field.  Our row was X.  Based on our experience with American stadium numbering/lettering systems, we were expecting seats in the back.  In NZ, they start with row ZZ at the back and as you get closer to the field you get to the beginning of the double row alphabet.  Row Z was 3/4 of the way down to the field, and the rows ended with row R.  WTF???  Who came up with that bass ackward lettering system?  Well, we're not really complaining cuz we were CLOSE.  But seriously...

The NZ Cricket team is the Black Caps.  They're not spectacular.  The news has been calling their current streak "dreadful".  They were (and still are) playing Pakistan, who were dressed in green on the day we were there.  We cheered loudly when NZ got their wickets and when Southee (our favorite player) made several outs.  And then we got donuts!!!!  It was just like a baseball game with people running up and down the sections selling food and beer (espresso coffees you had to go get - but how many stadiums in the states sell espresso drinks? such a great thing here).  One of the guys was selling donuts and they were AMAZING.  About the size of a hair elastic, squishy, bite size, and covered in cinnamon and sugar. so. yum. best part of the game.  Oh yeah, the Black Caps won too.  

After the game L, T, V & G dropped me off to go meet Lorena (who was at the Auckland Museum).  L, T, V, & G headed off to Whangarei and then Lorena and I were planning to meet them in Kerikeri the following day.  So Lorena and I had another day/night in Auckland.  We started out with an afternoon coffee and a nice long chat - very reminiscent of our college days!  Then we decided to just wander around the harbor and work up an appetite.  

After dinner we decided to get to bed early before our road trip, but we walked into our dorm room and started talking with the guy in the room who was a brewer and a winemaker from Portland, Oregon.  And then we met another American while we were brushing our teeth and started chatting again.  And then we got back to our brewer/winemaker and continued chatting... so we didn't get to bed early at all.  oops.

Monday morning, we got up and did some souvenir shopping, had coffee, wrote postcards, and then picked up our rental car for our impending epic roadtrip!  We just had to figure out how to get out of Auckland first...

lorena in all her backpacking glory - pre-road trip

We decided to drive up the west coast of the north island and drive through the ancient Kauri forest and then check out a Zen boulder garden on our way to Kerikeri where the rest of the group was.  After some fish and kumara chips (kumara is the NZ sweet potato - sooo yummy) we got to the ancient Kauri forest, put on some epic music in the car to match the epic scenery, and drove up a windy, dirt, steep road to the lookout tower:

the view from the lookout tower over the whole forest - gorgeous

The view was stunning!  But we were on a mission to visit the Four Sisters, the Father of the Forest and the Lord of the Forest.  The four sisters are two sets of trees whose roots have all grown together.  The Father of the Forest is the widest tree and the Lord is the tallest.  They were all impressive trees (and the boardwalks were really cool too - made it all feel a little Swiss Family Robinson or something!) and despite the fences, I still a found a way to hug the trees from a distance

ever a tree hugger :)

After the beautiful trees and the ridiculously curvy roads, we emerged from the forest and continued our drive up the coast.  We were planning on making good time back to Kerikeri, but we came around a corner and had to immediately pull off to enjoy this view:  

The amusing thing is that when we pulled in to admire the view, we met the couple we'd just seen in the Kauri forest admiring the view as well.  And then the next 3 cars that came around the bend pulled off as well and we were surrounded by everyone we'd just seen in the forest.  One of those cars carried a group of three who recognized us from the ferry to Rangitoto!  Small country, eh?  

We drove on as it got darker and made it to the zen boulder garden, but it was closed.  So we swapped places and Lorena took a turn at driving on the right hand side of the car and the left hand side of the road.  We survived (phew!) and now Lorena can proudly say she drove in NZ.  After I was back in the driver's seat, we made it to Kerikeri where we were staying with the rest of our group.  Road tripping in another country is pretty sweet as.

Christmas in Auckland - on the beach!

Christmas morning we got up early and drove out to Ponsonby to Vanessa's friends, Nicky and Merv's, house.  On the way, we passed a sign that was just too true:

At Nicky and Merv's, we skyped with the parental and grand-parental units while Todd made tortillas and streaky bacon.  Christmas breakfast was GREAT.  Unfortunately, Lorena liked the tortillas so we had to share with her.  Graham also made a genius move and used tortillas to make bacon butties.  So yum.

tortillas and streaky bacon!

After breakfast we opened presents.  We nominated Vanessa to play Santa.  Lorena and I came away NZ twins with (practically) matching NZ change purses, bags and jewelry.  Todd got a cricket game that he was most excited to try out.  Laura got her pounamu (a jade necklace carved into the Maori Triple Twist symbolizing the bonding of two people for eternity).  Vanessa got the promise of an afghan from me and Graham got some models to make.  Then I wrapped up Nicky and Merv's kitty Murray.  He didn't seem to mind too much.

After presents, we explored the nearby beach...

And then we found a playground with an awesome rope thing to climb.  I've been to many playgrounds in the states and around the world (well, pretty much just in the Tiergarten, but that still counts as an international playground) and this one was super cool!!  They've got things that we just don't have in the states - or at least, I haven't seen them.  There are mini zip lines, and this rope course thing, and the ground wasn't hard gravel but rubbery stuff!  Did I mention I'm simple?  Regardless, cool play things.  I was in a skirt so the climbing up high presented a brief dilemma.... however, I had an extra hair elastic so I fashioned myself some oh-so-sexy baggy shorts out of my skirt and scooted up to the top!  Project Runway... here I come.

that's me at the top, in the middle :)

Graham's missing piece

Back from the beach, we gorged ourselves (even more!) on a ginormous lunch that Vanessa and Graham had been cooking the day before.  Lorena exercised her hand at sketching Merv's new concrete sculpture and Todd and I tried out the cricket set to make sure it worked.  Lorena was the boundary of the cricket field.  If the ball hit her leg: 4 runs.  If it hit her head: 6 runs.  

Before we all passed out napping after lunch, we decided we'd better truly break in the new cricket set.  So, back to the beach!  We played backyard/beach cricket rules.  If you want details, send me a message, otherwise just know it was fun and I would have won if Graham had broken a leg; sadly maiming other players isn't allowed.

We were all taking turns batting and bowling.  Laura was up to bat and this group of 5 Samoan teenagers walked by, started laughing at Laura's cricket playing, kept walking.... and then turned around and asked to play with us.  Laura, never one to back down from stupid boys' mocking, proceeded to mock them back and then batted some great balls that their limbs and fingers got in the way of... But after the first few tense minutes, the guys stopped being quite so annoying, and started batting and bowling as well.. and they were crap!!!  One of the guys was wearing a hat that actually make him look like Bruno Mars, so the rest of the Samoans (and some of the Americans :) ) started singing "Just The Way You Are" to him.  It was pretty classic.  

We watched the Samoans play cricket (we casually fielded - they monopolized the game pretty thoroughly while we watched and laughed at their singing and crap batting) and when they finally took off, we finished our game and headed home.  

On our way back to the backpackers, we drove down Franklin Road.  It's a famous street in Auckland where a large number of the houses are decorated with (supposedly) an obscene amount of Christmas lights and decor, drawing huge crowds over the Christmas season.  ...there were lights on the houses... but if people want to see true decoration excess, they need to visit the States.  However they did achieve the distinction of creating the first real traffic we've hit in New Zealand!  It took us 10 minutes to turn onto the street!  Usually traffic is 3 cars in front of you at a rotary.  But I did see some cool lights set up like a spiderweb.  Not exactly Christmas themed, but cool nonetheless.