Part One: Blenheim to Christchurch

I spent three weeks in Blenheim, which is the longest I’ve spent in any location for the past three months.  I was happy to be done working 12 hour shifts in the wine bottling factory, so I decided to make Friday night a celebration/farewell to my friends and the Marlborough wine country.

Unfortunately, almost all of my friends had to work on Saturday, so the hostel was pretty low key.  I had a few beers and played my last games of ping-pong and pool, and at about 9:00, everyone started to wander into the TV room or off to bed.  I ended up chatting with two guys from Paris, a few Germans, and a group of friends from the Czech Republic.  They were all in the same jovial mindset I was in, so we shared bottles of wine and practiced our Czech and at about midnight, a few of us decided to go out on the town in Blenheim again.

Jean-Marie and Arnold, the Parisians, and Chrstopher a tall blonde German, and I decided to go back to Paddy Barry’s Irish Pub for a few pints.  It was pretty dead, so we moved on to The Loft, the saddest dance club I’ve ever been in, but decided to make the best of it there and tore up the dance floor by ourselves.  At 3:00AM, the club closed and we stumbled back to the hostel, Arlnold spinning the whole way home and Christopher walking hunched over like Frankenstein’s monster…when we got home, we polished off the last of the wine and I collapsed into my bed after another long, fun day.

The next morning, I packed up and said my goodbyes and around noon, I hit the road towards Christchurch, where I would be meeting some friends at the airport.  The road out of Blenheim was a pleasant winding road through the wine country, over rocky rivers and past acre after acre of rolling vineyards.  After about an hour, the road curved sharply to reveal the South Island’s east coast and a grand view to the Pacific.

For the next hour, the road hugged the coastline and the further south I went, the closer the mountains seemed to get.  Eventually, I was squished between empty sandy beaches and looming granite cliffs, and I realized that this was perhaps the most scenic road I’ve been on yet in New Zealand.  The road wound impossibly tight, with precipitous cliffs rising around every bend, and I was close enough to the ocean that the crashing surf sprayed on my windshield.  I also encountered a new road sign: “Seal Crossing”…I was so close the the rocky habitat of the New Zealand Fur Seal that they occasionally wandered up onto the road.  I blasted my music and drove sped around the bends pretending I was in a spy movie.

Oh, and this wasn’t a scenic detour or back road…I was traveling on the main north-south thoroughfare through New Zealand, the same highway that I’ve been on since I left Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island.  I love this country.

Eventually, I reached the town of Kaikoura, a pleasant, touristy establishment in a sheltered cove that caters almost exclusively to the whale-watching and dolphin-swimming industry.  The cover of my guide book is from Kaikoura, with a large whale fluke in front of snow-capped mountains that rise out of the sea.  Unfortunately, when I was there it was too cloudy to see the peaks so I had to just imagine that they were impressive.

I drove to the end of the peninsula, where there is a seal colony, and considered going for a stroll along the beach, but by that point, the previous night’s festivities started to pay their toll on my well-being and I decided to take a nap.

After my refreshing snooze, I got back on the road to Christchurch.  I soon reached the northern part of the Otago region, the largest farming area on the South Island, and saw the same rolling, sheep covered hills I’d seen on the North Island.  Otago was a bit different though…bigger, vaster, and much less populated.  I had the feeling I was the only one on the entire island as I drove down the highway.

I got to Christchurch around 6:00PM and had a few hours before I had to get to the airport, so I parked my car and strolled through the city.  At first, I was very turned off by the South Island’s largest city and the third largest in NZ.  It felt like a medium sized town, and it was empty.  But as I got out of the business district and more into the historical center, my feelings started to change.  This is by far the most British feeling town I’ve ever been in.  More so than London.  And even though I’ve never been to any other towns in the UK, this was exactly what I’d imagine they’d be like. Britishy.

There was a central square with an old cathedral, and a few nice looking museums, but the highlight is the huge botanical garden, complete with a lazy, swan-filled river lined with willow trees and park benches.  Unfortunately, as I got closer to the gardens, it appeared that everyone was leaving and when I got to the gate, I was told it was closed for the day.  No worries.  I wandered through the narrow cobblestone streets and down pedestrian shopping streets, crossing back and forth across the path of the city’s authentic trolley, which still operates throughout downtown.  I only had an hour or so in the city, but I got a positive vibe, and I’d like to come back and spend more time there.

Also, I happened to run into Roberto, my Argentinian roommate from the hostel in Blenheim, who was in Christchurch for the Pearl Jam concert (I know, I know I should have gone too… but tickets were a bit beyond my meager price range).  We laughed at the fact that in the third-largest city in New Zealand, we could bump into someone we know on the street.  That’s just kind of the way this country is.

Around 8:00PM, I headed out to the airport and met Todd and Troy Dubenezic, two of my former coworkers from DC who were taking a two week vacation to Australia and New Zealand.  Todd and Troy are brothers who went to school together, work together, and live together.  They are not twins, but they are might as well be. 

That being said, they are complete opposites.  Todd, who was my former boss, is a lenky, earthly guy with long hair and a glowing smile.  He teaches yoga professionally in his free time.  Troy is clean cut, with a shaved head and expensive cologne.  He is the only one at the company who voluntarily wore a suit every day to work.  He is an avid photographer and has a pilot’s license.  I worked with Troy as a DVD author and video compressionist, and he is the most thorough person I’ve ever met.  They are both vegan and they listen almost exclusively to trance music.

I worked very closely with Todd and Troy for two years, and I got to know both of them well.  We shared interests in snowboarding and backpacking, and the three of us had planned to hike the Milford Track together way back in July, before I had even purchased my plane ticket to New Zealand. 

When I picked them up at the airport, they both looked exactly the same, and it was obvious that they had gotten some sun while traveling Aussie.  They jumped in the car and we immediately began to plan the next few days.  After living on the road and having mostly fleeting relationships with other travelers, I was happy to be in the company of old friends.

That night we drove through the dark to the foothills of Mt. Hutt, a popular ski resort that was completely empty because it was out of season.  We stayed briefly in a nice hostel called the Redwood Lodge.

Part Two: Mount Cook and Queenstown

In the morning I chatted with the owner, an elderly Kiwi who reiterated my observations about the do-it-yourself nature of New Zealanders when she told me that she owns and maintains her own website.  I would have liked to stay and chat, but we had much to see, and we hit the road early.

That day we drove from Mt. Hutt through the rolling farmlands of Otago and into the alpine foothills of Mount Cook, the highest point in New Zealand.   We passed fields of wildflowers and long, glacial lakes that glowed a brilliant turquoise color.  These were the Southern Alps I came here to see…they were gnarly, rugged and snow-capped and the scenery looked more like Switzerland or Alaska then anywhere in NZ I’ve yet seen.

We arrived in Mt. Cook village and ate lunch at the Old Mountaineer’s Cafe and Bar, a cool little place that I hoped would be filled with bearded mountainmen, returning from weeks away in harsh alpine conditions to share beer and stories and head lice.  But alas, it was instead filled with a few groups of Japanese tourists and three hungry Americans.

After lunch, we went on a short hike through the Hooker Valley and saw the peak of Mount Cook, a few glaciers, and a roaring river.  It was very scenic, and I wanted to stay and camp, but we had to get going so I added the area to the top of my list of “Places in NZ to Return To Before Leaving the Country”.

After Mt. Cook village, we headed to Queenstown, the tourism capital of the South Island and the adventure capital of the world.  If you ever have any interest in sky diving, bungy jumping, jet boat riding, white-water rafting, mountain biking, canyoning, base jumping, or any other sort of activity where you succumb to the mercy of gravity for the sake of adrenaline, Queenstown is the place to be.

The town is a quintessential resort village, similar to Aspen or Chamonix…touristy but tasteful.  Robert Redford would like it here.  It sits at the south end of pretty Lake Wakatipu, with the huge snowcapped Remarkables rising from its shores, and loads of villas and condos peaking through the trees. 

It was nearly sunset when we arrived, and as Troy is a photographer, we were on a quest to find a good place to take some photos of the dropping sun.  We drove north of the city along the lake and pulled over at a small beach, where the sky slowly began to give us an array of nearly every color in the rainbow.  We stayed there for over an hour, and got some great photographs.  At 9:30PM, it still wasn’t completely dark, but we were famished, so we returned to the town and checked into our hotel.

We wandered through town a bit, although it was pretty dead on a Sunday night this early in the season.  We ended up eating at Fergburgers, a modern burger joint that serves massive patties (vegan ones too!) from 9AM -5AM every day.  I liked the place…and they were even playing trance music when we walked in, so the Dubie brothers liked it too.

Part Three: Te Anau and Milford Sound

The next day, we jumped in the car and took care of a few last minute trekking preparations before hitting the road from Queenstown to Te Anau and on to Milford Sound.  The drive was spectacular.  As we left Queenstown, we meandered through vast Middle Earth scenery that reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Montana and Wyoming until we reached Te Anau, the town at the base of Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in NZ and the start of our Milford Track the next day.

However, our plan was to continue on to the town of Milford Sound, the end of the Milford Track, to drop off the car so it would be waiting for us upon the completion of the trek.  The road to Milford was even more scenic.  It started out along the lake, but quickly cut over to the next valley, a wide glacial, U-shaped valley highlighted by a slow river with loads of wildflowers along its banks.  Then we hit the green beech forest, and began to climb until eventually breaking out of the treeline to spectacular alpine views.  Near the end, the road dissects a huge mountain via the Homer Tunnel, the steepest road tunnel I’ve ever driven through.  After making it down the intense grade, we were rewarded with spectacular views of the narrow Cleddau Canyon which took us to the even more spectacular Milford Sound.

We checked into the Milford Sound Lodge, a cool backpacker resort in the small village of Milford Sound and went immediately to the waterfront to capture the sunset.  Milford Sound is one of many glacial fjords in Fiordland National Park, but as it is the only one accessible by car, it is the most touristed.  And looking out over the water, I could see why.  In the distance, huge glacier-covered peaks rise thousands of feet out of the water, up nearly-vertical walls that are covered with green shrubs and waterfalls.  The highlight is Mitre Peak, 1692 meters high, with a distinctive canine-tooth profile that is extremely picturesque. 

Staring out over the water, watching the setting sun cast brilliant oranges and pinks on the snowy peaks, I realized that this was the New Zealand I wanted to come to.  This is the Promised Land I hoped to find.  I won’t be leaving this area any time soon.

I need to tell you about a coincidence that has occurred.  This coincidence out-coincedences all other coincidences I’ve ever experienced.

When I dropped my car off before the sailing journey, I left it with the parents of Rebecca Borgen, the wife of the chicken farmer I worked for in Northland.  Rebecca’s parents just happen to be next door neighbors with the only other contact I have in New Zealand…cousins of my close friend Steve.  Think about this for a second.

I know that New Zealand is a relatively small country, but the fact that the only two people I know in this country of 4+ million people happen to live literally right next door to each other in a north Auckland suburb just blows my mind.  Sometimes this is a very small world.

Anyhow, after picking up my car from Rebecca’s parents, I made the arduous journey to the house next door to introduce myself to the Gatlands.  Tracey Gatland is an American (the daughter of my next-door neighbor’s brother) and when she was about my age she did the same cross-Pacific backpacking journey through NZ that I’m doing now.  While traveling, she met Chris and they eventually got married.

Now the Gatlands live in North Shore City, just across the bay from downtown Auckland, and they have four kids ranging in age from twelve to eighteen.  When they found out I was in the country, they were more than willing to meet me and provide some hospitality.  After a week on a boat, I was ready for a hot shower and the ability to stretch my legs out in bed, so I gladly accepted their offer for dinner and a place to sleep for the night.

They were amazing hosts.  Tracey picked me up from the ferry, showed me the way to the shower and invited me to join her family for dinner.  They were incredibly friendly and curious about my travels, and we enjoyed a hearty meal of meat and potatoes and then some wine and conversation that lasted well into the night.  I had a wonderful time.

The next morning, all of the Gatlands were awake and out of the house by 8:30 and I prepared some breakfast and let myself out an hour or so later.  I was planning on helping Peter and Antonia run some errands for the boat, but they had to take Silas to a doctor’s appointment, so I packed up my stuff and started heading south.

My tentative plan is this: to drive to the northern part of the South Island, the seasonal work capital of NZ, in the hopes of finding a temporary (3 weeks or so) stint doing manual labor to inject some cash into my dwindling bank account.  Having been unemployed for two months now, I’ve watched my meager savings slowly chisel away, and while I was on the sailboat, I came to the conclusion that I need to make a bit of money if I want to last for a whole year.

Anyhow, the result is that I have to rush through the southern part of the North Island, skipping a bunch of areas that I would love to visit in order to get a few solid weeks of work in before I head to Fiordland National Park in early December to hike the Milford Track.

Once on the motorway going south out of Auckland, I passed through the Waikato, a large area of rolling green pastures rich in agriculture, through the sizable city of Hamilton, and along the shores of Lake Taupo, the largest lake in NZ and the center of the country’s primary geothermal area, as well as an internationally renowned center for trout fishing.

Taupo is similar to Lake Tahoe in the US (I think, I’ve never actually been to Tahoe), it is a large picturesque lake with snow-capped volcanoes on the eastern shore.  It was incredibly scenic and I would have loved the opportunity to explore the area, but I pressed on through without stopping.  I set up camp at an isolated DOC campground in the Kaimanara Forest Park just past the shores of the lake.  I was the only one at the campground, and the solitude was both refreshing and a little bit frightening.  As I lay in the tent in the dark, reading by flashlight, I kept hearing the rustling and cracking of large creatures in the surrounding trees and when I went to investigate, saw at least two pairs of reflecting eyes in the dark…opossums, I assume.  I decided to ignore the noises, zipped up my tent, and fell asleep.

In the morning, I hit the road going south and quickly passed into the boundaries of Tongariro National Park.  This area is one of the most scenic in all of New Zealand, with three volcanoes (one of which was Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings).  The part of the park that I passed through was a small desert and the land was used for military testing.  I passed a tank on the highway and was hoping to see some explosions or paratroopers or something, but saw nothing of the sort.  However, I was treated to extraordinary views of the three snow-capped volcanoes, again tempting me to come explore them…the Tongariro crossing is a very popular day hike across one of the volcanoes….but I had an agenda to stick to, so I continued driving.

After Tongariro, the landscape shifted back to green pastures, although those south of the volcanoes were steeper and higher than those of Northland.  And in the distance were mountains.  Not huge peaks, but a long chain comparable to the Appalachians of southern Virginia and North Carolina.  As I neared Wellington at the very south of the North Island, the mountains pushed the highway all the way to the west coast, and I had a quick glimpse at an angry Tasman Sea before crossing a pass in the mountains and descending on Wellington.

I arrived in the city around 2:30pm and immediately went to the terminal for the Interisland Ferry.  I was told that crossings had to be booked in advance and that they are quite pricey.  I was also told that I wouldn’t be able to cross until the next day at the earliest.

I made some phone calls and secured the necessary bookings and decided to spend the next day exploring New Zealand’s capital and second-largest city.  I only had a limited time, but I loved Wellington.  It has a the air of most seats of government I’ve been in, and I would describe the parts I saw as a combination of Ottawa and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, with maybe a pinch of Portland, OR to include the vast and green city parks.

I spent a few hours in Te Papa, The Museum of New Zealand, a modern and engaging museum with exhibits ranging from the country’s geologic past to native ecology to Maori beliefs.  I could have spent all day in the museum, and I hope I have to chance to come back and explore more.  Like DC’s Smithsonian, admission was free - another huge plus.

After the museum, I made a booking at a small, quiet hostel a short distance from downtown and headed out to find a bite to eat.  I was hoping to find someone at the hostel to go out with, but there were few people there and those who I saw were making their own meals in the kitchen, so I headed out alone.

I wandered around for awhile, passing a number Chinese and Japanese takeaways, Kebab stands, Italian restaurants, and fast food chains before deciding that A) there are a lot of international choices to places to eat in Wellington, B) there are more restaurants than there are patrons, as many were completely empty, and C) I need a beer.

I remembered seeing a place on the harbor near the Te Papa museum called The Brewery and went to investigate.  Turns out it is the home of Mac’s Brewery, one of the largest microbreweries in the country and the maker of one of the few NZ beers I’ve really liked since coming here (Mac’s Black).  When I walked inside, I saw no bar to sit at and start up a conversation, it was more of a restaurant, and it was a bit pricey, but I was hungry and they served good beer, so I conceded that this would be a solitary dinner and took a seat.

I ate alone, gazing out across the low gray clouds that hung over the harbor while watching some skateboarders battle the fierce winds in a courtyard outside.  After my meal, I decided to take a long walk back to the hostel and explored more of the downtown area, strolling along a pedestrianized street lined with shops and cafés.

Back at the hostel, I looked into job possibilities and hostels to stay at the next night and had a brief conversation with a Swedish woman about the Tongariro crossing before being tortured through an awkward, hour-long conversation with a man who, after refusing to shake my hand (“on principle…nothing personal”) tucked his arms into his sleeves and talked to me about such varying topics as “Who Owns the Moon”, “There are Probably Fossils on the Moon”, “Who ARE Americans” (I tried to explain cultural assimilation, but I think he failed to grasp it), “What is Obama’s Religion”, “Obama is an African”, and “All Israelis are Arabs”.  Talking to this man was frustrating, (e.g., when I asked where he was from he said “I don’t know”) but eventually I was able to pry myself away to write this passage.  He did bring up a good point though…it is always interesting to talk to people from other cultures, and although I don’t know where he was from (he was an archetypical Aryan, so I assumed he was German, but he mentioned that he grew up in Africa and his accent hinted at a Russian influence), he provided interesting conversation at the very least…

Tomorrow, I will leave the hostel in the morning, spend a few more hours exploring Wellington, and then catch the ferry to Picton, leaving to North Island for the next few months…

After leaving my campsite at Taputaputo Bay, I started heading south thinking I was going to have to find a panelbeaters (NZ for body shop) to get my alignment looked at.  But miraculously, when I started to push 85kmph the wobbling was no longer an issue.  I took the car well over 100kmph and it was totally fine.  Don’t know what it was about that night at Taputaputo Bay, but somehow my car got fixed.  Awesome…I didn’t want to spend money on trying to fix it anyhow.

My first destination was the Hokianga Harbor.  This is a somewhat isolated area on the west coast of northern New Zealand that is generally very poor and very Maori, but it is supposed to be beautiful as well.  I saw on my map a way to see much of the harbor, including a car ferry across it, and decided that would be my route.

The drive was fun, more of the tight, narrow curves I’ve gotten used to driving around here, but the ferry ride was uneventful and not too impressive.  The landscape was nice, mountains in the distance, but the water was an ugly brown and it smelled like brackish. 

However, just a few miles (sorry, kilometers) down the road it became much more beautiful.  The twin communities of Omapere and Opononi hug the Hokianga right before it meets the Tasman, and the area is dominated by a 500ft tall sand dune and beautiful blue water.  I stopped to go for a short walk and take some photos and then got back on the road.

Next was the Waipoura Forest, famous as the last great grove of giant Kauri trees in New Zealand.  These trees are similar to the Giant Redwoods in size (a bit smaller, but still massive) and in the Waipoura Forest there is one called Tane Mahuta which is a few hundred feet tall and nearly 20ft wide.  It is a huge tree.  Also in the forest, is the smaller but much wider tree known as the Father of the Forest, this one is over 25ft wide.  In addition, there are several others of impressive height and girth throughout the walking trails.  I spent an hour or so wandering through the forest, amazed at how different it was from the cape that I was at just hours ago.

The Kauris are not quite as big as the California Redwoods, but they are equally as impressive to see, and the surrounding forest reminds me very much of the Redwoods or Olympic National Park in Washington…they feel prehistoric almost, like you are walking back in time when you stroll by these ancient trees.  Tane Mahuta is estimated to be over 2000 years old.  That is pretty old.

After seeing all I wanted to see in Waipoua, I realized that I still didn’t know where I was going to camp, and that it was already 5pm.  I asked at the visitor center if there was anywhere I could just park my car and walk into the backcountry and she recommended a place just south of Waipoua called Maunganui Bluff.

I drove for awhile down a gravel road and then it suddenly stopped, in a small town of about seven houses, right at the beach.  There was a trailhead to Maunganui Bluff, but I looked at the trail and decided it was too serious a hike for this late in the day.  It was 6km to the top and it was straight up from sea level to about 1600ft.  Even if I felt like putting myself through that much hiking, I’d still have to do a good chunk of it in the dark…I quickly decided against it.

On the way out, I tried one more access road to Maunganui, and got just near to what had to have been the end of the road, when I was stopped abruptly again.  This time not by the sea, but by a river of cows.  As far as I could see down a crossroad, there were cattle, moving about two steps a minute as the grazed on grass.  I couldn’t see a farmer anywhere and I couldn’t see an end to this convoy of cows.  I waited for about 15 minutes, and then decided that if I didn’t find a place to stay I’d be sleeping in my car…so I turned around and continued south on the main highway.

After another 20 minutes, I saw a sign for Kai Iwi lakes, a set of three freshwater lakes that lay just a few kilometers from the beach.  According to my guidebook, there was a “beautiful campground under a grove of pine trees” on the one lake, so I decided this was as good a place as any to set up camp.  When I got there, I was a bit disappointed. 

The lakes are apparently a pretty popular recreation area for Kiwis, and they are used for waterskiing, windsurfing, and general lake tourism, and to make matters worse, this was Friday of NZ’s Labour Weekend, a government holiday and the official start of summer.  Needless to say, it was far from the remote, isolated, quiet campgrounds I’ve been staying at for the past three days.  But whatever, it was a plot of land by a lake that I could set up a tent.

The lakes themselves are pretty cool.  Kai Iwi means “Food for the People” in Maori, and they used to be filled with fish and eels.  Which is strange, because they are dune lakes, meaning there is no inlet or outlet…they are just huge basins within an area of sand dunes.  Their water level is completely dependent upon the amount of rainfall…at the time, they were pretty high because there has been so much rain this Spring.  I tried to go for a walk around the one, but the trail head was completely submerged.

Anyhow, they are a pretty cool natural wonder, and less than 2km from the beach (I could see Maunganui Bluff taunting me in the background), but they are a little overused for my taste.  I was starting to get spoiled by the previous campsites I’ve had.  I went to sleep anyhow…and faintly in the distance I could hear the surf crashing…that’s four nights in a row now.

The next morning, I woke up and drove back to Auckland, with a lunch stop at the farm in Paparoa to return a book I had borrowed.  It was a gorgeous day and I saw a good amount of countryside on the way.  When I got back to Auckland, I wanted to upload all of my photos, but couldn’t manage to get any uploaded at the hostel…I will get around to that eventually…I promise.  For now, you’ll have to do with just text entries.

After leaving Matai Bay, I swung north to hit the very top of New Zealand, Cape Reinga.  On the west coast the entire way up the cape is a stretch of beach known as 90 Mile Beach (although it isn’t 90 miles long…not even 90km long..so I don’t know where the name comes from).  According to my guidebook, and few other people I’ve spoken to, a common way to reach the tip of Cape Reinga is by actually driving on the beach.

Now, in general I know my limits and I know my vehicles limits, but I was assured by many people that my little front-wheel-drive Honda could handle 90 Mile Beach because the sand is packed hard as cement.  So I had to give it a try…if you’ve read my previous mini-posts, you know that it didn’t work out very well for me.

When I got to the beach, I thought it looked pretty rough..not the tide, that was rough too, but the beach itself.  There seemed to be no way that my car could handle the sand.  But there were other vehicles (4x4s, yes) and tire tracks in the sand, so I figured I’d give it a go.

I made it about 3km or so up the coast, the entire time feeling generally unsure about the whole situation, and then abruptly started to slow down until I was stuck.  Irreversibly stuck.  Well, shit.

I spent a few minutes trying to dig myself out and trying to push it, but these were futile efforts, the car was really stuck.  I looked out at the crashing waves, at least it seemed the tide was going out, but I wasn’t all that far away from the surf line…maybe 20 feet.

The beach was beautiful…white sand as far as I could see in either direction, nice dunes, a powerful ocean, and plenty of sun, but I was starting to get seriously worried.  Then I got seriously pissed off at myself for making such a stupid mistake, and I had images of the surf coming in and taking my new (used) car out to sea and all I’d have left was a story of regret. 

Luckily, I had cell service, so I called a towing company and spoke to a nice lady who assured me that this type of thing happens a lot with ignorant tourists like me, and that I should really not venture onto the beach at all without a 4WD vehicle.  And CERTAINLY not while the tide is up as it is now…she then told me the little morsel of information that everyone else, including my guidebook, failed to mention.  It may be obvious in retrospect, but the sand is only rock hard below the high tide line.  Above the tide line, it is soft sand just like any other beach in the world.  I would have had no problems driving the beach if I had gotten there six hours later.

Anyhow, I can’t blame it on anyone else, it was my fault.  And now, on the phone with the towing company, prepared to shell out half of the car’s value (and all of my savings) just to get it unstuck, the kind lady told me that they wouldn’t come help me.  She informed me that it would take $200 and that they really don’t like taking tow trucks down onto the beach.  She advised me to sit and wait and that “someone will come and help you out”.  Then she said goodbye and hung up.

Shit again.  Now I’d have to just sit here and wait in the hopes that someone would come by and feel pity on the ignorant tourist and pull me out of my trap to safety.  But lucky for me, this is New Zealand.  It is full of people ready to help me out.

First was a German backpacker who was walking the entirety of 90 Mile Beach and camping in the dunes along the way (kinda jealous of that).  Lucas and I spent an hour or so digging out the car and trying to move it.  We had nominal success, I drove it about 10 feet further before it got stuck again.  And then for some reason two bigger waves came up and began to submerge the front left tire.  Shit shit shit.  All I could think about was how I’d have to explain this story to everyone for the rest of my life…and I couldn’t really say “The sea was angry that day” because that would be a lie, I’d have to say “The Tim was idiot that day” or something.

Anyhow, eventually a nice kiwi bloke in a 4x4 who was going fishing on the beach stopped and asked to help.  Unfortunately, neither of us had rope.  I did however, have my traveler’s hammock (an item I looked at the day before as an unnecessary accessory) and fortunately my new (used) car has a trailer hitch.  We tied the hammock between the two cars and with ease, he pulled me right out of the ditch and onto hard sand.

I thanked both Lucas and the fisherman profusely, and prayed that I wouldn’t get stuck in any sand in the 3km back to the access road.  I didn’t.  Although once back on the road, I did notice that my alignment had been adjusted and that my car shook violently whenever I went above 85kmph.  But at least it wasn’t underwater.

I continued on to Cape Reinga on the paved road and heeded my newly learned lesson.

After leaving the farm, I decided to hit the road again to finish my tour of Northland that got cut short a few weeks ago.  My first stop was in Whangerei, where I met an American couple on their sailboat, Sereia, for what was basically an interview.  I contacted them about a week ago about a post I saw on one of the job boards I check regularly, and apparently they got a bunch of responses.  Anyhow, I’m hoping to be selected to help them crew their boat for a few legs of their trip around NZ.  They were a cool young couple with a fascinating 18-month-old kid, and because I have basically no sailing experience (which they assured me was no problem), I think I could learn a lot from them.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up about this one, but it would be awesome if I get some sailing experience while I’m here.

After sharing a great meal of lamb steaks and a few beers with them on their boat (Antonia used to be a chef), I headed off to a campground north of Whangerei, to an area known as the Tutukaka Coast, and I’ll be honest, I chose it more for the name than any other reason.  When I was in Peru prior to coming here, I never made it to Lake Titicaca, so when I saw the opportunity to stay in Tutukaka, I had to take it.

The road to the campground was amazing…not very wide, plenty of hairpin turns…I put my new (used) car to the test, racing against the setting sun in the hopes that I wouldn’t have to set up my tent in the dark.  But to no use, I didn’t quite make it before dark, so had to set up camp without light. The site was incredible, though.  I was practically alone at the campground, a plot of land just over some dunes from a curvy, white sand beach.

After I setup camp, I went down to the beach and walked around in the dark.  I was gazing at the stars, which are totally different in the southern hemisphere, and admiring their reflections in the bay, when I realized that what I was looking at in the water wasn’t the stars at all.  Along the edge of the surf was a number of faint, but undeniable glowing spots…like lighting bugs had fallen into the water and washed up onshore.  I kept trying to see what was producing the phosphorescence with my flashlight, but could never see anything.  After a few minutes of this, I ran into a group of kids, who with characteristic Kiwi kindness explained to me that it is actually the plankton in the water that glows.  On a good night, the entire bay could glow green, orange or red.  I will have to keep looking for these fantasy glowing waters…

After my walk, I fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing.  In the morning, I got up and took another beach stroll, this time I could see in the distance the Poor Knight Islands, a sort of mecca for deep-sea divers.  If you’ve ever seen the BBC miniseries Blue Planet, this was where that amazing shot of the hundreds of manta rays floating in the narrow channel was shot.

I then hit the road northward towards my first ever planned potty break.  Near the Bay of Islands, there is a small town named Kawakawa, and in this town lies one of the world’s absolute best public restrooms.  The famous Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser apparently lived the final years of his life in Kawakawa and one of his last works was a public restroom, created entirely out of recycled glass from the community.  The building was pretty awesome…if there is any way for a bathroom to be a work of art, this would be it.  The roof had plants growing out of it, and the rest was an artistic assortment of glass and tile…it reminded me of Guell Park in Barcelona.  Having a strange affinity for public restrooms, I very much appreciated this stop.

Next was the Mediterranean-feeling town of Kerikeri, which is where most of the orchards in Northland are.  This was a cool little town, full of cafés and small shops.  I stopped and had a superb coffee and muffin and planned the rest of my day.

I decided to go the northernmost point of the east coast, right before the far, far north of Cape Reinga (this will be tomorrow) and chose an isolated beach camping ground known as Matai Beach.  It was another spectacular drive, through farming country full of the luckiest cows and sheep I’ve ever seen.  Beautiful sunshine, mountains and volcanic hills, and miles after miles of curvy, white sand coastline.  And the crazy part is that there is almost no one here.

There are a few beach towns, but there are just as many isolated, deserted, beautiful beaches.  Matai Beach was no different.  There is a Department of Conservation campsite at the end of the peninsula, and it overlooks twin coves of sparkling blue water and white sand.  I made a good choice.

I set up camp around 2pm and then headed down to the beach with a book and few of my leftover beers.  I had the entire landscape to myself.  I sat on an old lava flow (pahoihoi, if I remember correctly) that looked like the good-guy rock monster from Neverending Story and cracked open a beer.  That afternoon was marvelous.

After a few hours of relaxation, I had an itch to explore so I set out along the beach towards some rock outcroppings.  After scrambling over rocks for awhile, I found a sea cave that was fully accessible because it was low tide.  I went in as far as I could without a flashlight, and found a few starfish in the tidal pools.  It looked like the cave kept going, but without light I had to turn around…plus the thought of the tide coming back in while I was exploring the depths of this cave crossed my mind as a really idea.

I went back to my tent, made some Lamb Korma (it was prepackaged, don’t be too impressed), read some more and then went to sleep…again, to the sound of waves crashing just on the other side of the dunes.  I could get used to this.

I’ll post some photos soon…I’m writing all of this from my mobile workstation (iPhone tethered to my laptop for internet connectivity) but it is pretty slow, so uploading photos is not an option right now.  I’ll post them as soon as I get some broadband.