Sand, water and alcohol

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Starting up where I ended, my plans for going to Cape Reinga the next day as descripted earlier, didn't quite go as planned. There had obviously been a misunderstanding on the phone when I made the booking but even though it caused some annoyance it only resulted in posponing my trip.
The short story is that I ended going there 2 days later and in the mean while going out on a sunset kayak tour. THAT was something though!. We took off 12 people leaving the warf around 5 pm. and paddled around for a while to get to know the kayaks, continuing on to a winery on one of the 150 islands in The Bay of Islands (Which is what this area is called). It was an amazing island with wine stocks all around, a great view as always and most importantly, lots of bottles of wine, which in our case were meant for tasters. I can't tell you for how long we were sitting there and drinking wine, but we certainly weren't holding back so along the way of empty bottles everyone started 'connecting' and it turned out to be a whole little party going on. When the sun started setting, we went to a little outpost on the island where we had a picnic while watching the sun going down behind the mountains. With that done, we returned back to the kayaks and headed home. This was the most amazing of it all actually, as the atmostphere by paddling along on the still and black water with a dark sky and only the shoreline visible was quite an adventure.
when we finally returned back at the kayak rental thingy, everyone felt so well-connected that we finished the day at one of the bars in town drinking and chatting till they closed.. this included the tour guide as well.

Next day was Cape Reinga and I got picked up by a bus at 7:10 (quite early after a night out) from where we drove northward with our first stop being an old Kaori forrest (one of the native trees in NZ that can grow up to 800 years old, some myths say). Pretty neat trees and quite some big ones too. You could almost feel the age in that forrest... magical!
From there we went straight to Cape Reinga and by straight meaning 3 hours on a gravel road with bumps lifting you off your seat, a bit driving around in about 20cm deep water, crossing some rivers and finally reaching the most northern spot in New Zealand, Cape Reinga. On our way up there, our tour guide was telling some of the myths about the place, one of which was how the Maori people believes it to be where your soul travels to when you die, crawling up into a little but 800 year old tree just at the very tip of NZ and leaping off for their jurney to the afterlife in the spiritual homeland of Hawaiki.
The stories were good but once we reached the cape, a thick mist had put itself just about the exact spot where it shouldn't be in that exact moment, so what is known to be the place to go in NZ if you want a great view, suddenly seemed rather dull. No worries though, the lighthouse was cool 😊
When the view - or the lack of such - started to get boring, we continued on to the sand dunes to do some boarding. This was immense fun and I definitely want to do it again if I ever get the chance. You even got yourself a good amount of exercise from walking up the hill again to get another go, even though you kept on telling yourself this being the last time when fighting to get up the hill, but then again, as soon as you got down you wanted another go. I managed 5 runs in an hour, and I'm proud of it.

The next couple of days I spend most of my time reading, swimming, reading some more, sleeping and cooking and concerning cooking, I'm slowly starting to develop a low budget style as so many others here, but finding it a fun challenge to actually make something nice out of it. It's getting better, but not easy at all. Also, I'm starting ( or trying ) to make a habit out of joining forces with other people on the hostel and making big bbq's which makes it all a bit better and cheaper and a whole lot more entertaining!
I considered for a while to stay here in Paihia another month and sign up at a sailing school to learn a little about that stuff now that I'm here in such a beautiful setting and at the same time I got offered a room in an apartment with two girls I met on one of the many tours I've been on. It all sounded very nice and I was very close to doing it but I was also beginning to realize that I might not want to stay in NZ for THAT long so eventually I ended up planning to leave Paihia pretty much as soon as possible. That plan only lasted a very short while though, as I heard about a festival going on in New Plymouth from the 12-14th of march where one of the girls I'd met on The Mousetrap (The hostel I've been staying at forever) were going to volunteer and suggested that I did the same. So, for applying I needed a little more time and booked some days more at the hostel. When It all started to sound reasonable and I had been accepted as volunteer I once again thought of leaving to have a little time in between Paihia and New Plymouth which is a 6-7 hours drive, but now my birthday were coming up fast which needed to be planned as well. The best solution for handling that, I found, was to stay in Paihia and celebrate it with all the people I'd gotten to know throughout my stay. This is what I'm doing now and as it turns out, two other guys joined in to celebrate ones early birthday and the others departure back to england after a 19 month stay in NZ, so it might just turn out to be a pretty big party!


.... big step in time. It's now a lot of weeks later I'm writing than the previous 'chapter' and I'll go about it a little different, upside down. I've left Paihia and even New Zealand by now and have ended up in Sydney where I'm staying at my great uncle ( or something similar ) and having a best time.
This turn of event, as it was, occured after having gotten sort of stuck in Auckland for about a month again - I obviously have a tendency of hanging out at the same spot for quite a while - and got a mail from my uncle inviting me to Sydney for a sailing trip on his new yacht ( a beautyful cutter rigged Sloob ) as he happened to be on a holiday for about a month ending the 1st of May. This offer I couldn't resist so picking up the next cheap flight from auckland to sydney I took off from nz planning to return again in May for a closer look at Wellington and the sounth island but skipping the rest of the north.
As I'm writing I'm at my uncles place considering what to bring for 2 weeks of sailing which will go a little up north from Sydney to a place called Pit Water where we'll anchor and do smaller daytrips out discovering the waters and it's gonna be great!
Trailing back from this I stayed in Auckland for such a long time for the simple reason that I was having a really neat time! I went down from Paihia to a hostel in Auckland called Ponsonby Backpackers where two german girls I met in Paihia were staying. The beginning was a bit weird as I just came from a place where I had known most of the people pretty well and now had to get to know a lot of new people again. After having been hanging around the hostel for some days it was time to head down to New Plymouth for the Womad festival that I've mentioned earlier and as one of the two german girls was supposed to leave soon, her travelmate joined me for hitchhiking to the festival from where she wanted to travel on south to see the rest of the island and I was supposed to head back to Auckland again as I had placed my laptop and other expansive stuff at Chris' place for not to bring it to a festival.
After making a beautiful sign saying: "Womad - New Plymouth", we headed off with a tactic of catching a bus to one of the on-ramps for the highway going south but even before we arrived at the bus stop we were stopped twice by two girls walking on the street saying they were supposed to go to Womad the day after and that they could maybe give us a lift if they could get our numbers and one of them even gave us a lift straight away to a good spot for hitchhikers. With that being a pretty decent beginning of our hitchhiker career we started the actual thump-stuff. After a while we got the first lift taking us only a little outside of auckland center where we found another spot to do 'our thing' and after about half an hours time we got picked up by a car with a maori man, wife and a 9 month old girl who by far didn't have enough room for our backpacks but still insisted on helping us out so with a lot of pushing, pulling and reorganizing we managed to fit everything into a car that now didn't have any free space apart from JUST infront of the driver. It turned out though that the family was only a little part of a bigger convoy all heading all the way to New Plymouth for a big wedding and after picking us up they took us to their house just close by where everyone was waiting as they obviously had been driving past us earlier and thought about picking us up but only just concluded that they wanted to. After having been introduced to the whole family, witnessing a maori family prayer before leaving on a jurney and repacking all the cars to fit our backpacks in, we took off, 3 cars in line. Everyone in that convoy easily qualified for the most generous, open and sweet people we had ever met. Was almost too much. We drove on and stopped over for small breaks every once in a while for the kids to stretch their legs, get some food and just to take it easy and along the way the family insisted on paying for everything, drinks, lunch, dinner and stuff. As I said, allmost too much. Also when they found out that we had booked accomodation only halfway to New Plymouth as we hadn't counted on getting a lift all the way, they told us to cancel it and stay at their place for the night which we didn't say no to either.. insane though, inviting hitchhikers for staying at your place.. wouldn't recon that happening too often. Waking up for a big breakfast and realizing they had already booked new accomodation in town for us to stay till the festival started, wasn't too bad either. They qualified for a cheese cutter...
After they had taken care that we had everything we needed and that they couldn't possibly help us any more, we said goodbye and tried our best to say thank you well enough. Wasn't possible though. Pretty wild experience.
Step one day forward the festival started. I had already arranged volunteer work to get my ticket for free so I was good to go. The german girl didn't have any just yet though so I went to the festival alone to begin with planning to hook up with her again as soon as she had gotten herself a ticket as well.
Going to a festival not bringing either tent or mattress is something i've done before with great success but it has always been with friends around at the festival so it was still a bit new for me having to hook up with complete strangers and asking for a place to sleep. As it turned out though, one of the girls who had stopped us in Auckland offering a possible lift, contacted me at the festival and invited me to her camp which included 3 different families and some odd guys/girls on my age where I pretty quickly found myself well included in the group and invited to take their spare tent and mattress if I wanted to. Another offer I couldn't resist :D With that settled I continued to enjoy the festival which turned out to be one amazing weekend! Work was fair and about half of my shifts got cancelled cos of too many volunteers and too little work so I consider myself quite lucky.. in not only this area.
After the festival I got a lift back to Auckland by the group I had been staying with ( The german girl found another camp to stay at and I didn't really see much of her at the festival.. we met up at the backpackers in auckland later though, so she obviously changed her plans of heading south straight away)
Reaching the backpackers and meeting up with people again immediately made me feel more home there than I had felt before and making a bunch of nice friends there and from Womad made Auckland a pretty nice spot for me.

To confuse a little more the story now returns to Paihia and my last time there which starts with some sailing trips. One was a small one day one that I had done earlier as well but the fun part of this was to end up in the Russel marina - just 10 min sailing from Paihia - go for a drink in the nearest bar and meeting up with one of the coordinators from The Animation Workshop in Denmark. Kinda random!
The other sailing trip was 22 hours on a boat going pretty far away from civilization, night kayaking in bioluminescent algies - which was a pretty magic experience - catching and eating random fish and sea urcheans, talking to random and pretty christian people, eating awesome dinner and breakfast and best of all, finding a whole beach with an unlimited amount of clay just underneath the sand. This great treasure was found a little late on the trip though so we didn't have the time to make much out of it, but to make my signature in any case I produced a small face peeking out of the sand. Returning back from that trip the next happening was my birthday. Pretty big happening that is, and extremely important!! Everything was all planned up and ready and loads of people were supposed to show up and celebrate everything with a big bbq at the backpackers but when we finally arrived on the day it was the worst weather I have experienced so far in my history of NZ. Hard rain and stormy winds was the Gods weapon of choice that day but even so they didn't quite succeed in pulling us down. Everything got a little smaller, more compact under the shelter and a little colder but apart from that we at least managed to get drunk and go out in the night getting even more so. Good day and night, bad morning...

This is the new end of my beginning in Oz and I will try my best adding to this blog a little more often, though I doubt I'll succeed 😞 To add a little more exitement before I finish off, I might mention that after thourough research in the matter I've found that water really has a tendency of turning Counter Clockwise when being flushed in a toilet or a sink and I stick to this till someone proves me wrong. Much easier that way :D

Ciao

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