Apparently NZ calls a beach where the water hits the land. I wouldn’t count most of the stops we made on our Christmas Eve day drive…after our pancake breakfast we took a two hour drive on a highway that was a dirt road. We stopped along the way for some waterfall views and such, and made our way north to the Coromandel. No beach. I won’t show you those pictures, they aren’t that pretty. We drove to Whangapoua (interesting fact: Wh pronounced F in Maori) and back, stopping at every “beach” to see if there was any sand on these coasts. We took a very interesting train ride that some guy set up on his land to mine clay for his pottery business. Interesting is the word I use because I’m not sure how else to describe it…there were walls on the sides made of tires, wine bottles, pottery, and the little train did these reversals back and forth all the way up this big hill. The view was nice, the eccentricity made me a little creeped out.

MK managed to convince me to go back to Cathedral Cove and we made the hike down to the Cove in record time, only to have MK nearly eaten by a giant bird. We cooked dinner, had some wine, and Elf was on TV, so it almost felt like home that night!

After breakfast, and me learning that yes, we will be getting up at 6am every morning, and no, no one cares if that makes me grouchy, we headed down another scenic highway this time traveling from the west side of the island to the east. In two hours we were in Pahia, a busy little beach town. We noticed that we had lucked out in a way, every one else seemed to be traveling in the other direction for their holiday weekend, and we missed all the traffic.

We took a ferry to a town across the harbor called Russell that is attributed as the first settlement or something that gives it an excuse to be a tourist attraction but wasn’t worth it, other than seeing the oldest pub in NZ. We wandered around and ate lunch. A catamaran picked us up there and we took the 4 hour Bay of Islands tour. It was beautiful. We went to the hole in the rock, and actual feature that the boat could pass through. They brought us to a private island and gave us time to view all the islands, climb around and play with sheep. After the boat dropped us off back at Pahia, we realized that despite it being a little overcast, we had third degree burns on our faces. Lovely.

We went to a local bar and had some fish and chips. In NZ, there is no such thing as ketchup. It’s tomato sauce. And you pay for it. By the package. Boo. I beat MK at darts and we stared at a TV playing cricket and pretended we had any clue why anyone watches that silly sport, then went home and passed out.

In the morning we were pleased to learn that whatever package we had bought included breakfast every day, and for some reason we could get whatever we wanted no matter the price. I’ll take it… We headed north up the North Island over the bay bridge and realized that basically every NZ highway is a scenic one. MK stopped quite often to take pictures after reading a photography book on the plane. You have him to thank for all these great pictures. The first beach we stopped at was called Waiwera. It was a small fishing village with beautiful water and shells everywhere.

We went to an enormous museum as the first planned activity on our trip. It was the museum of the Kauri tree (pronounced like Cody) that was used by the Maori, then by the European settlers due to it’s extreme size and color, and it also leaks a sap that is a gum used to make many different things. They took down so many of the trees that are now protected. There are even swamps of these trees that are excavated that survived under ground for thousands of years.

We drove through Ruawai and stopped at a local cafe for some local coffee (MK) and beer (Me) and a panini, the most common food item, no matter what ‘type’ of restaurant you are in, they will grill you a sandwich, in the entire country. We headed north again through the forest that was just expansive and breath taking. The roads were so windy we were crawling at a snail’s pace, but it was fine because we could see so much more.

We made it up to Omapere and Opononi where we were staying and stopped in many hill top view points to see the coast, the cove, the beach across the water from us, and the forest behind us. Our hotel had a indoor/outdoor porch and view of the pier and water. We had a small dinner, dressed up in our warmest, played a round of pool to kill some time, and met up with a group for our Forest Walk.

Two Maori men, Joe and Gray, took us and a group totaling about 15 through the forest to see Tane Mahuta (169 ft high, 45 ft wide), the god of the forest, and Te Matua Ngahere (59 ft wide), the father of the forest. They are the two largest and oldest Kauri trees in NZ. The hike was beautiful and took about 4 hours. They gave us hot chocolate and sang Maori songs about the history of the trees and how important they are in the culture. It was a beautiful night.

The guides were really nice and we had a beer with them back at the hotel and talked about the Dept. of Conservation and the acts that they are working on. They are replanting Kauri trees and doing these tours on their own to educate tourists on the forest and their culture.

We were at the airport so long it felt like we would never get to NZ. There was a mix up of flights and check in spots etc. etc. We went from SFO to LAX, on United, the worst airline I’ve ever seen. We finally made it on the Air NZ plane and were all excited until we realized we were sitting for 12 hours straight on this thing. It was huge, I’d never been on a two story plane before. They give you your own TV for movies and music and games. I watched three movies (The Illusionist was pretty good) and listened to music. MK was able to sleep by his nice little window, I on the other hand was in the middle with a pregnant lady on the other side of me. I’m pretty sure she thought I was nuts, when I couldn’t get comfortable after they served our dinner I chugged three complimentary glasses of wine, and put my jacket on the tray table and slept sitting forward on that. Whatever works! We woke up in time for breakfast and got to see the sunrise as we landed which was pretty amazing.
We were supposed to get in at about 6am but were pretty late, arriving at about 9. We got our rental car paperwork, our vouchers for the trip, our luggage, and walked out to the car. Here’s a picture of the car, it is burnt orange 🙂

*Hook ’em!*

I walked to the right side, saw the steering wheel, and moved to the left side, where MK was trying to get in, going “oh, yeah, that.” MK started the car and, it started to rain.
We were pretty worried because even though it’s summer there, we’d heard all about how rain can ruin your entire trip.

We fought over the map the entire way into Auckland, about a twenty minute drive, until we realized they gave us two different routes to take and we had done about half of each…but we eventually made it to our hotel. I learned that I apparently do not know how to read maps, especially ones with roundabouts on them. *sigh*
We immediately showered and took a little nap. It stopped raining by when we got up. There is gambling in NZ, but it was a pretty weak little place called Sky City. It’s the tall tower in that picture up there. I mention this as a tip: apparently casinos give good exchange rates hoping that you will gamble. So we went to get some money and ended up eating some lunch there. We were pretty disappointed by the food. Also, there is a Goods and Services tax, which means you don’t tip, which means you get horrible service.

Auckland is on the water so we wandered down a few piers and looked around. We found a bus that drives a scenic route all around the far parts of the city and took that in a circle, and when we got off bought some NZ wine and food to cook in our hotel for dinner. We grabbed the car and drove to a place called Cromwell Park, a very high lookout to the city the top of which was called One Tree Mountain. It was hilariously windy, but full of beautiful flowers, trees, cows, and sheep. We toured the city and shops along the way home and were astounded by how expensive everything was, even considering the exchange rate. My hiking boots here were $64, there they were NZ$276, or US$180.
Overall, it was a great day to have finally gotten there and all that, but I was anxiously looking forward to our driving to see more of the countryside and events we had planned.