Sorry for not having updated sooner, but I've been supper busy with assignments before the break and then traveling during the mid semester break. I decided to break up the two weeks of traveling into two separate posts to make it easier for everyone to read.
The adventure started on Tuesday morning when I picked up Sam and Chelsie, two other students from the US, on campus with all their stuff and then off we were! We decided to just blaze through the North Island on highway one to get as far north as possible that day. We stopped in Taupo for a quick lunch and continued all the way to half an hour North of Auckland, in a town called Orewa. Nine hours of driving total and this was only the third time I had ever driven on the left! We stayed at a cool tropical-themed backpackers called Marco Polos for the night and then headed up the next morning to Tawharanui Regional Park, a little peninsula that sticks out from the main land, where we did a cool 4 hour hike up and down sheep-filled hills along the coast down to this cool little bay surrounded by rocks called Anchor Bay. We spent a good deal of time playing on the rocks, especially on the water before we left. We were basically walking right through sheep pastures and since it's lambing season there were little lambs everywhere! We stayed in Whangerei for the night and got up at 5:30 the next morning to drive all the way to Kaitaia to catch an 8:30 tour of the 90 mile beach. We took Harrisons Cape Runners and got to drive on the beach at 100 kilometers an hour on a huge bus! We stopped to go sandboarding on the giant dunes and I pretty effectively wiped out and rolled all the way down the dune. Anybody surprised? Then we were driven to a beautiful little beach for lunch and continued on to cape Reinga, which is the furthest point north in New Zealand where you can see the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide! It's also an important place in Maori lore because they believe it is the place that the dead go to get to the afterlife. After the cape we stopped at an awesome ice cream place and a place to see 45,000y year old buried Kauri trees. After the whole tour was over we drove t Ahipara to spend the night. There we stayed at the best backpackers called Endless Summer Lodge (perfect name since it was on the beach) and met some other cool people who were traveling. In the morning I went to go blokarting on the beach, but there wasn't enough wind so I rented an ATV and cruised on the beach for a little (75 kilometers/hour!) while Sam and Chelsie relaxed on the beach. We left around noon along with two backpackers who were staying at the hostel and needed a lift to Auckland. Needless to say it was quite packed in the red baron with five people and all our stuff. We drove down to the Waipou forest and saw the largest Kauri tree in the world (called Lord of the Forest). It was so big, if 15 people tried to fit their arms around it, they wouldn't quite reach around it! We took a cool little ferry to get across to the next segment of the Northlands (land North of Auckland) and stopped at a weird backpackers that reminded me a lot of an old persons house. The following day we drove down some more and visited another little Regional Park called Shakespear for lunch and then proceeded to drive to Auckland and drop off the two backpackers and have some awesome sushi for dinner! Driving through Auckland was crazy, but I survived. We spent the night at the same backpackers as the first night north of Auckland, but we decided to camp this time. It was definitely a three person tent, but we managed to squeeze four people in the tent because by this time we had picked up Sebastien from the airport. We had a relaxing evening with some wine and cards and then tried to sleep in the tent, which worked fine until about 3 in the morning when it started to pour. And not having a waterproof tent became a problem...so I spent the next couple of hours curled up on a couch in the lounge. The funny part was that it was absolutely gorgeous the next day. The next day was relatively uneventful with a couple of exceptions. We accidentally managed to lock the only key to the car inside the car and spent an hour trying to break into the car. Hilarious ordeal, since we successfully got the car opened, but a little stressful at the time. We drove back into Auckland where Sam, Chelsie and Sebastian picked up their campervan for the following week. We tried to head to a campervan park but somehow got lost in the suburbs of Auckland for a good little while. We finally figured out a meeting point and I went along with Sebastian back into Auckland to pick up Lizzy and Richard, my traveling buddies for the next week. We had dinner under the skytower and then drove to the Coromandels. I felt like death, since I had little sleep from the night before and extreme carsickness due to the type of windy coastal road we were driving on at night, so I was very relieved to get to the backpackers in Coromandel Town. And thus begins the adventures of week two...
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