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Where's Suzie?
After my dull but productive week in Auckland I was picked up by Julian, Linda and Lucy (two girls Julian had met in Tahiti) on Thursday evening (lost track of what day of my trip this is) and headed off back to Takapuna to stay at his mates place for the night before heading up north. Left not too early the next morning and headed for the Bay of Islands which is quite a trek up the east coast. We stopped a couple of times and got some santa hats and music for the journey (one a really really bad tape of re-done xmas songs) and arrived eventually in Paihia, a sweet little touristy spot on the east coast from where you can see alot of the little islands. There we stayed in a dorm (my first time!) in a place called the Pipi patch, quite popular with the youngsters, and us girls went out for dinner whilst Julian went to visit his ex and 1 yr old sprog. The next day we'd planned to Kayak but the weather was so bad we took a trip up to the Waitangi National Reserve where we did the touristy bit and saw The Treaty of Waitangi (a treaty signed in 1840 between the brits and the tribes of NZ to say that they were kinda under our rule and in turn we'd protect them from the French - good deal I think!). Weather was still crap, so crap in fact that a tourist boat had crashed on the rocks and it'd taken them ages to be rescued. That evening we met up with an Irish guy Julian and I had met on the plane from Tahiti, got some food and wine from the supermarket and had a lovely slap up barbie and salad. The next day was spent walking (or "tramping" as the kiwi's call it) up to the Haruru falls which was about 6/7 kms away along the coast, over rivers and through the forest. This was very pretty and not too tiring although we did get Julian to hitch back and get the van as we were too lazy to walk back again. That afternoon we went to Julian's ex in Kerikeri for Sunday roast which was absolutely bloody gorgeous and just what we needed (despite there being a couple of grizzly sprogs there). On the Monday we went further up north headed for Cape Reinga and took a girl called Sarah with us we'd met in our dorm (also picked up a random hitch hiker, a swiss bloke called Yves). We stopped at a mates of Aneka's (Julian's ex...getting confusing eh?) to collect some boards for sandboarding and drove up to 90 mile beach, took some piccies then went to the dunes for some sandboarding. This was wicked fun but really tiring trying to get back up the dunes as you had to climb the really steep ones in order to get a good fast run down again. Once we'd had enough we went to Cape Reinga where you can see the Tasman Sea on the left and the Pacific Ocean on the right and then headed back down to Marty's to drop the sandboards off. However, just a few km's down the track the van broke down....in the middle of nowhere!! We flagged down a van who, after a little to-ing and fro-ing, towed us to the nearest garage where we got Marty to meet us (quite a while later) and tow us back to his. Sarah and Yves decided to cut their losses and leave....and then there were 4.....again. Eventually we got back to Marty's, a little farm like place also in the middle of nowhere, where there lived Marty and his Mrs, an english girl called Laura, sheep, cows, geese, emus and the cutest dog called Peppy (oh yeah, and lots of spiders). The van ended up worse than expected so we stayed there the night and Laura cooked us this huge fish she'd caught earlier that day. Woke up the next morning, Linda and Ju took the radiator to be fixed and Marty booked me on the next bus down to Paihia (only 1 a day). I got there by around 6, stayed back at the pipi patch and got the early bus to Auckland the next morning where I am now!!!! I'm tired now but had lots of fun. I've only given you a run down of what went on as so much happened (as you can imagine). Everyone was really friendly apart from a horrid woman who wouldn't sell us some eggs (another long story) so I told her to stick 'em up her jacksy - he he! Doing my laundry now and gonna get my hair done and meet up with Girry tomorrow whom I haven't seen in about 7 years or so (I think!). Hope you enjoyed this installment as much as I did. I'll be back xxxxx
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