Days 5-6 (May 26-27)

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island
May 27th 2006

Published: May 28th 2006

Edit Blog Post

jotoms

me3

Day 5 (May 26) was nice. Rented my spaceship (his name is OB1 - I didn't make that up, it's on the door) and headed north to "Northland." It rained the whole drive, but I was able to stop and see the largest Kauri tree in NZ. The picture doesn't do it justice - it's 150 feet tall. I was there all alone in the rain and wind and I had only about 15 mins left before sunset. Freaky.

My Spaceship has a great sound system (with iPod input - too bad I forgot mine), but there are ZERO radio stations up north of Auckland, so I drove in silence for hours. Finally found NZ's Wal-mart called the Warehouse and bought the new Chili Peppers (2-disc) and Jack Johnson CDs. Anyway, drove 450km that day and slept in my camper at a campground.

Day 6 (May 27) Next morning I got up early and headed up to Cape Reinga, which is the northern-most point in NZ. I was the only one there for about 45mins. It was beautiful. Then the tourists started pouring in so I left and hit the dunes. The sun was finally shining for the first

OB1

time in my 5 days here. I was excited. I drove along the dirt roads with my windows down jamming out to my CDs. I will know the words to every song before the week is up.

Along the way I stopped wherever I felt inspired. My NZ book is nice but I get tired of reading through all the details so sometimes I just follow the brown signs to parks and get lucky. Some of the lookouts, beaches, and waterfall were found this way.

I made it down to Paihia and found a nice hostel that charged me a whopping NZ$12 (~US$7) to sleep in their driveway and use their showers. My spaceship is about US$26/day, so gas is my largest expense. I've been on their internet here for an hour trying to get these pictures set up. I haven't had a chance to put them in order or add captions, but I hope to later. I also had to shrink them to get the website to co-operate. I will show fullsize pics when I get back. Just wanted to show you what I've been up to. It is beautiful here, even in the rain. And I