Blogs from Ninety Mile Beach, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

NZ day 24- Wednesday Well here we are- a bright & early start to the day which is no mean feat after a menopausal night. We had the alarm set for 7am (bugger me, we are on holidays) so that we would be showered & ready for our 8-30 collection for the Cape Reinga tour. Given my menopausal night & the fact that it was 17 degrees overnight.....doesn’t assist hot flushes I can assure you.....I felt like a wet toe rag when the alarm went off....the first bit of sleep I’d had foe a wee while. Anyway a lovely Maori gentleman collected us at the appointed time & then we set off to collect the rest of the straggly mob....they were worse than sheep! Dead set- we collected a group of 5 Germans.............well they were very ... read more

April 15, 2011 WOW….what a super day this turned out to be!!!!! As the entire hostel was filled with people, and…there are only two showers and three toilets, all in different locations of the hostel…..I managed to be #2 in the shower on our floor of the hostel. And…that was at 6:30 this morning….UGH. Normally, I would have waited by the tour bus was picking us up in our hostel’s driveway at 8:30.….and, I didn’t want to take the chance that I could get my sagging body cleaned and in shape for the day. And…the tour bus was right on time, with one other young couple from Germany….where else would they be from when 77,000 student work visas from Germany have been issued for this year…….and that couple was going also. Then two more pickup locations ... read more

April 14, 2011: Sort of a lazy beginning to this day…….I slept like a dead log….so when I had finished the morning rituals, it was only about 7:20AM. We had decided last night that we did not have to get on the road very early……..we only had 65 miles to go, even though those are on well paved two lane roads, but they do go through the heart of each and every tiny or large village or town…..and that DOES slow down any possibility of driving those 65 miles within an hour(like in the states). HOWEVER…….we do enjoy driving through those tiny towns, looking around when we can, and wish often that we could just pull over, park, and wander around to get a better grasp of what each of those unique and charming little places ... read more

Additions to the map of our travels..... ... read more

Hello again everyone, I had a fantastic day on my trip up to Cape Reinga 3 days ago! We left at about 7am and drove through a town called Taipa, the one thing about Taipa is that there’s a place called Cable Bay there. Apparently in the 40’s and 50’s, there was a cable going all the way across the Pacific to the west coast of British Columbia Canada! When the driver was explaining it I shouted out that it connected to Bamfield and he was pretty surprised, as no one he had driven before had ever known that. We went to an ancient Kauri forest and got to tour around the board walk that the New Zealand government spent millions on for the Queen’s visit (she didn’t even end up walking on the thing), and ... read more

So, we broke our camera today. Well, it kind of broke itself. Waterproof, my a**. But, No worries, mate! We got ourselves a new one. Not as nice, but it'll have to do. Maybe when we return we can try to salvage some early NZ photos, but no new pix today, unfortunately. So, here we are, day 4 in NZ already. To be honest, we've pretty much lost all track of time. Kinda nice, really. But we've realized that we've spent the better part of a week here, and have just visited the tiny top part of the North Island. It's been great, but we don't know if we'll make it to the South Island in time for our car rental exchange! So, we've been staying in backpackers' places, which have mostly been big homes that ... read more