From Auckland to Cape Reinga: the Van Chronicles
by Adam & Lara on 03/23/10
Apologies for the sporadic barfing of blog posts - we've been vanning around (a term that us van people like to use) north of Auckland for the past week or so. Internet seems to be a bit spotty on the serene beaches up here, so thanks for your patience.
Here are some highlights:
The Steema made a new friend at Bayly's Beach! At first they barked at each other but then they sniffed their tailpipes and played nice.
We ended up spending the night on the beach, free of charge, and caught the following sunset:
Sweet Jeebus, that's nice.
The next day we drove around on 90-mile beach. It's not 90 miles long, nor do they even measure things in miles here, but it was badass nonetheless. The key is driving in the wet, hard sand. If you drive in the dry sand you'll get stuck and then Lara, Adam and two other random people on the beach will have to push you free. This happened to one German couple who were neither dialed nor living the dream.
Then up to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point in NZ, where the currents of the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea collide to form a huge ripple. Down here they teach kids that the Tasman Sea is one of the World's oceans, but if you come talkin' that trash to me I'll fight you to the death.
We saw this insane beach from Cape Reinga so we decided to hike down to it. It ended up being the weirdest hike we've ever been on. Observe:
Sweet beach! We should go there.
The first trail marker was inside a cow field, so we walked through at gauntlet of about 35 cows who just stared silently at us the entire time.
Then we walked through Smeegle's lair, where we captured a photo of Smeegle as he lurked around with his giant fishing rod in hand. Like most movies, Lord of the Rings does not portray nearly as much detail as real life - case in point, look at how hairy Smeegle really is.
After that we walked barefoot through a barren desert wasteland and burnt our feet which were already burnt on top, but now burnt all over.
Finally we got to the beach, which I forgot to upload a picture of. But here is a close approximation of what it looked like:
Next up: heading down the East coast of Northland so Adam can burn the other side of his body while fishing.
