Leaving Tauranga

Well we finally left Tauranga, after our first three months in New Zealand, most of which we spent trying to work and sometimes working in Tauranga. We were headed to Northland and stopped back at Jeremy's on the way through Auckland. We ended up visiting and staying for the evening. Jeremy got us in contact with some friends of his that live in Mangawhai Heads, about an hour and a half north of Auckland. The next day we headed up to meet Lailene and Mark.

The Kiwi Day

We went up early in the day and had some fantastic pizza at Waipu, then spent the afternoon swimming and snoozing at Lang's Beach. This little beach has a
en we heard a pig running away. We thought the hunt was down for that area and then a few minutes later the ruckus started up again only on the opposite side of us. We ran up the mountainside to the dogs and Mark had me help him flip the pig over and handed me his sticker, a thin 10" blade. After having tried it I'd have to say the knife hunting was easily as fast and probably cleaner than

Nick's Pig

Nick and his catch of the day

gun would have done.
Mark quickly checked over all the dogs and found one had caught a tusk in the jaw a few times. One dog, the biggest, youngest and his daughter's pet was unaccounted for and we were quite worried about it, but after calling for fifteen minutes she turned up. Then it was my job to huff my new acquisition back around the volcano to the ute, all 150 lbs of it! They tie twine to the feet on each side and you were the pig like a backpack, which is sort of uncomfortable.
We were just weighing the pig at Mark's mate's house when Lailene phoned to see how we were doing, that's when I found out Carla was still in bed sleeping. We told Lai we were out of luck and headed back to the farm to surprise the girls, and they sure were surprised.

After the pig hunt, we headed to Lang's Beach for mussel hunting. The best time to do this is at low tide. The water was between waist and neck deep and there was the odd wave that was more than strong enough to wash you off the rock you were

Gathering Mussells

Nick getting pushed around by the waves while finding mussells

picking on. Luckily there was mostly sand in the area but the first wave that hit me (Nick) washed me off the side of a rock and bounced me by the ribs off the next two boulders hidden beneath the surf. Standing on the beach side of the rock was much calmer. We picked our limits of 50 mussels a person in about 20 minutes and headed back in to the beach.
While, they went out looking for mussells, I (Carla) had the great pleausure of seeing an octopus that got stuck in the rocks. ( pics to come later)

Food all gathered

That night we had a great feast that was 99%!g(MISSING)athered. The apricot sauce was the only thing was boughten. For supper, we had wild boar breaded in fresh bread crumbs. ( it was very tasty), garden potatoes, fresh mussels and garden salad. All in all it was very delicious.

We apologize for not having any pictures as we have limited internet at the moment and are not able to upload any photos at this time. We will be sure to upload them as soon as we can.

As