Northland

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It has been a very eventful last couple of days! Sunday night I had a change of plans, and instead of going straight to Wellington like I thought, I decided to grab a ride with two of my new homies (one of whom owns a van) to the region North of Auckland. We were planning on leaving Monday night but neither Will or Janelle could break their reservation at our hostel, Bamber House, so we couldn’t leave until Tuesday morning. Monday night was miserable- there wasn’t enough room in Bamber House for me to stay, so I ended up at a less-friendly hostel down the road. The actual hostel was fine, there were a few familiar faces, but I was miserable. I walked there with my backpack on in the pouring rain thinking of how much I missed Oly, friends, family, familiar. Auckland is such a depressing place. That night I contemplated going home, but some mix of pride and hope stopped me. And thank god I did. The next morning I got out of Auckland for the first time since I got to New Zealand. The grass on the countryside is literally greener. There are sheep, rolling hills, ridiculous trees that look like they’re upside-down… it’s everything that I expected to see and exactly what I needed! We made our way up to Cape Reinga, one of the Northernmost tips of New Zealand. It was gorgeous! My camera could never do it justice! Since it was a clear day you could vaguely see the King Islands off the end of the cape. After taking the short walk to the lighthouse at the end of the tip, we backtracked a little bit and camped. Our tent was literally steps from a beautiful beach with white sand and bright blue waves. It was amazing! At night we braved the wind for a few minutes so that we could stargaze. You could see the milky way perfectly, I’ve never seen such a beautiful non-light-polluted place in my life. I swear I could see every star in the sky. We met Jason, a local dive instructor and our camping neighbor, and got “rinsed” (it means drunk). Janelle and I stayed in the tent outside and froze to death, but it was entirely worth it! The next day, October 7th, we got up moderately early and made our way to the giant sand dunes on 90-mile beach, on the Tasman Sea side of the Cape. I, despite being dehydrated and hungover from all or our “rinsing” the night before, climbed up a huge sand dune. Now… climbing anything when you’re hungover is difficult. Hell, climbing just about anything is moderately hard for me, but this was intense. The dune was so steep that you had to use your hands and your feet to get up, and every step you took you sunk down into the sand. Let me tell you, being on a huge pile of sand is not the best thing to do when you’re dehydrated. The view from the top wasn’t that great but running back down the steep dune was fun. It felt a little like floating! After this we made our way back towards Auckland and camped at a beach on the way with more white sand and islands in the distance. More stargazing ensued. Unfortunately, the plan was to pick up Will’s friend at the airport in Auckland and then continue on towards Waitomo, but we ended up having to stay that night in Auckland because Will’s friend’s flight was detained due to a bird strike (OMG I hate planes so much!) Once again, there wasn’t room at Bamber House so Janelle and I had to find a hostel elsewhere. We walked for about two hours, up and down the hills of Auckland, carrying our ridiculously heavy backpacks trying to find somewhere with two dorm beds available. Finally we called a place on Mt. Eden that had room. On our way there we met quite a few interesting characters. A homeless man followed us for awhile and tried to convince us to roll his joint for him. A police man stopped to offer us a ride, which we didn’t take and immediately regretted. How cool would it have been if my fbook status was “Rode in the back of a police car in New Zealand…?” Then the last part of the trip was guided by an old local. When we finally got to our hostel- Yaping House- we were SO relieved, and then immediately terrified. The house was disgusting. Our sheets definitely weren’t washed and the whole place was infested with rats… or at least one rat… who was currently residing in our bedroom. However, a shower is a shower, and it was significantly warmer than the tent that we had been sleeping in for the last two nights. We got out of Auckland as soon as we could and headed for Waitomo, about 3 hours away. So here I am, sitting in Waitomo, and I swear I haven’t been so content the entire time I’ve been here. It’s raining cats and dogs but we’re staying in a hostel called Juno Hall, the best place I’ve been yet. I’ve spent the day sitting by the fire in the living room, reading guide books, listening to someone fiddle around on the guitar, and eating soup in these big couches that you just sink into. It’s wonderful. The wifi around these places isn’t fast enough to upload pics, but I can‘t wait to share them with you all! My plans for the next few days are very up in the air, but hopefully will be able to write more soon!

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