Blogs from Ahipara, Northland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

If you are ever travelling to Cape Reinga, I highly recommend the Endless Summer Lodge at Ahipara. It is in an excellent location just right across the road from the 90 Mile Beach so you awake to the sound of waves. The "lodge" itself is a 1880 wooden villa. The rooms are very homey and even the bunk beds were super nice! It's environmentally friendly too, as they use ... read more

A WHOLE week in the north of the Northlands! The sun, sand, rocks, sand dunes and kitchen Spent it all with the Walker Whanau (plus adoptees) on the waterfront batch (you should call in sometime...) Partial dislocation of shoulder whilst attempting to surf and burnt to various shades of brown, broken out in ugly welts from the surf wax...LOVE IT! Found out the weather isn't too flash up in Nepal with deaths and flight cancellations....stand by mode is all on now Oh and I got a great introduction to using a digital SLR....so want one right now (in fact I'm bidding for one right now before I fly out tonite...fingers crossed) Pity I don't have the photos from the North but will get it off Nathan (all 6+ gB of it LOL) Well it has been ... read more

Ahipara 25th - 27th November 2008 This sweet litttle place is close to Kaitai and was to be our base for exploring Cape Reinga. It sits right at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach. We went down to the beach to swim - the surf was great fun. Our campsite had rustic charm with a log fire burning in the main room at night. Very cosy as the nights still have a chilly edge. We got chattingto a lovely Kiwi couple, Gordon and Marcia, who come from Christchurch - they have said for us to look them up when we get there. People are extremely friendly and welcoming here. ... read more

A Weekend with the Families This weekend has been stage two of the moving out of the flat. Friday morning Gary's family arrived at our place at 7am with the trailer, we all loaded it up and headed north to my parents place. It was a relaxing weekend, Gary played in the Kaitaia squash tournament and we did just a little exploring. Gary's family went to Cape Reinga, quad biking, along to doubtless bay. I went to Rarawa Beach with Mum & Dad for a look. It's on the east coast just north of Houhora. A beautiful long quiet beach with super white sand. Today it was back to Auckland and back to reality for the next four and half weeks before finishing work and doing the final move.... read more

And still the tree of us are travelling together. Anna, me and Marian. So what did we do since last time? Ow yeah: we went from Pahia (after the karaoke-night) towards Allen our grandpa-host. The first few seconds we were doubting if we would follow him with our car (he came with his car, because we wouldn't find it on our own.. o no, we wouldn't). At first he seemed like a little monster, walking bare foot.. but, we tried to trust him... After 40 min of really bad road in the middle of NOWHERE, we even got much more doubts.. Me and marian had to move to his car because we were scraping the ground with our fully loaded car. So we arrived to his wooden house (read: shed), where we got one room, for ... read more