Matai Bay

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27th - 28th November 2008 Matai Peninsula

Unfortunately, our camera had a bit of a fit and gave us a scare - none of the photos we took here came out, but luckily we didn't lose any previous photos - it's amazing how sick you can feel when you think you've lost all your pictures and not had a chance to back them up yet - a lesson learned!

It's worth mentioning this place though, as Matai Bay is truely beautiful. It is actually a twin bay right out on a peninsula which is wonderfully quiet and quite remote. There were hardly any people here. We camped on a DOC site right next to the beach. We swam in the sea and walked all along the beach. We were lucky to see a NZ dotterel (quite a rare bird) and its nest which had eggs in it. We were careful not to upset the bird and kept our distance, but it was lovely to see.

That evening we happily chatted and ate outside the van, completely oblivious to what was actually going on inside Erica - when we got in to go to bed, we soon found out - she was FULL of mozzies, like some kind of nightmare plague! Like idiots we had no spray, only repellent to put on ourselves. That was before Rob got hold of 'the cashbook of death'! He used my little budget cashbook to kill each and every mozzie that had dared to come in. We were frightened to open the door after that, as I joked that all their mates were out there waiting to come for their revenge, LOVE and HATE tattoed on their stingy bits!!! We made it through the night (too petrified to go out to the loo) without a single bite!

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