And so back to hospital.....

One day, when I let other people take the photographs, I may have a more successfully flattering image....ah well, here I am at the northern most point of the North Island, Cape Reinga.


I decided to take a road trip again for a week, initially to go to Paihai to meet up with Dom and Sarita and kids for a couple of days and then on to the Cape and then slowly down to New Plymouth to meet up with Mike, for the Pretenders concert. A busy schedule, well, not that busy.


So I set off full of hope and delight, the weather has turned at last and summer is here. First stop Rotorua, and back to that crazy hostel Cactus Jack's to see whether there were any likely fellow travellers who wanted to go up to the cape. There weren't, but I did meet a young keen and married couple from the UK, Hereford to be precised, and they were having a good travel round. Along with them was a gentle American called Ben from Minnesota. He thought he was rather witty, they were all quite young and rather boring company. The kind of company that still quotes from Monty Python....will it never end? So an early night was had, not quite the wild times that I had there previously, but that was OK. I found myself in quite a different headset, even quite blase about everything to do with the beauty of New Zealand! My how the complacency sets in only just after a year. Still, till this day, I had never been north of Auckland and certainly hadn't experienced the beauty that is the Bay of Islands. The journey was swift and uneventful on the way up to Paihai, and as it goes I arrive 24 hours early. It was a nice motel, and like many seaside resorts, small chalets based around a pool. Young couple running it who were very popular with everyone. So early morning swims and all day swims and evening swims etc.....the following day, rather unsuccessful journey to swim with dolphins. Dolphins we saw on a four hour cruise round the bay, and then a quick swim off a beautiful beach. An emptier sea I have never seen, as we gazed down with goggles, but I have always wanted to swim off a boat, so that was fun. In fact it was all fun, riding the waves with an excited aunty, must have pleased the girls!!!! :) As I was hanging out at the backside of the boat saying farewell to our compadres the dolphins, it was pointed out that there we were looking at a couple of fornicating dolphins. I have since learnt that dolphins are the only other animal to have sex for fun. They certainly looked as if they were having a blast!


We all left a couple of days later, and after having to call out the AA because my trust vehicle, Winnie was complaining, I left for Cape Reinga, another 300 or so kms to the north.






So do I look enough like a tourist? Well, Cape Reinga is a pretty special place where Maori beliefs let the spirits go on to the next world from this vantage point. I had a moment to reflect on some of the ghosts that I thought I might be able to bid farewell to at such a delightful spot. But being surrounded by various other tourists and the urgency of photo taking rather broke the mood for me, so I thought that I could probably find a better place for private contemplation. And so I did, about 4okms down the road, I followed a sign saying 'Spirits Bay', well that sounded promising. By the by, I had said to the AA that I would not go off-road, so it was with a deep breath that I plunged onto the gravel road for the next 15kms. (You might want to refer to earlier blogs to see what happened the last time I was on a gravel road - it wasn't pretty) When I arrived at the Bay, I knew this was where I was going to spend the night, it was just too good to be true, so I had a quick dip in the plunging surf and went back to the main road for some supplies, then back to the camping ground, such as it was . There were the amenities and the sound of whinnying horses and lowing of cattle, while the sun went down and the moon gradually rose. The mozzies were out in force! I had a special hurrican lamp that burnt citronella oil to ward off all bugs and flying things but it didn't really work, and they made a meal of me. Interestingly, I learnt off CSI New York, that it is only female mosquitos who bite....well, I always knew I attracted the ladies!!!! I must check that piece of crucial info. I seem to be learning alot of info and useful info at that , about various species. So let me show you this space.

Beautiful isn't it........That night the mozzies were so bad that I had to sleep with baby wipes in my ears to stop them being invaded. I don't think I was successful, these girls liked to nibble ears! I wasn't even bothered by the rowdy crowd who were partying well into the morning.

I set off fairly early, not sure how Winnie and I were going to travel the next part of the route. After all it was only 55 kms off-roading, and no harm seemed to be done. As were were traversing down the road, I thought that we ought to have at least a glimpse of 90mile beach. So we took a sharp right, and whoops, we were off-road again! What a beach! amazing. just straight surf and sand for 90 miles. An excuse for lots of crazy driving by 4x4 drivers which was the only crappy thing, but there is a coach that apparently drives through the waves with a load of tourists whooping in the back seats.....uhm.....I gingerly dipped my toes in the water and took a scoopful to wash my face.

So, off on the road again.

I dropped off at as many beaches that I could find, here's just one of them, where I had a little swim.

So this is a lovely little hippy township called OPo,,,,,something, and it's almost at Opo.....something else. Anyway, Opo is the 'friendly dolphin' - not too friendly I hope!!!! But these beautiful sand dunes are beyond compare and the gorgeousness of this little place made me almost want to just stop there, and stay there for quite a long time. It's rather like the place that I stopped at earlier in the journey. It was Mangatamaga( or somethinglike that) a small fishing bay, that appealed to hippies and rich tourists. I found the only hair cutter in town, and got a free haircut, because I wanted to so little and she was so nice....what a delightful find these places are....I do wonder what it would be like to live in one of them. Don't get me wrong there is quite a big Maori presence in these places as well, but one realises that there is really nothing foranybody to do here, so there is the feeling that those who live here, are not necessarily in the mix for job hunting etc....but then, sometimes it is all about the fishing. Certainly in this place with the sand dunes, there was more Maori presence and everybody looked as if they really lived there.

And so the journey went on and as we got into Auckland, which I wanted to do before the end of the day, things began to go a bit sketchy. I lost my way, and spent about three hours travelling around the outskirts of Auckland before gradually arriving at a place where I was only 100kms or so away from Hamilton. Time was ticking and I decided to get there before sleep. I arrived in Hamilton at 11-00pm (ish) and settled down for the night in the back of the car again, this time far from Spirits Bay, but in London Street, opposite the first Waikato gardens in Hamilton. A fine place and a long night sleep. Eight hours later, I was ready for the day. I hooked up with Mike and we had a lovely breakfast, and then on our way to New Plymouth. The journey was hot and relaxed so that when we arrived in town we were looking forward to a reasonably priced motel with a pool. We found it.

A couple of pictures of Mike modelling the pool - it was a very nice place, complete with other guest who had a Peugeot 405 and was delighted with his model.

So I don't think I left anything out, but I'm sure I did, and it'll come back to me. Gotta go now, because I have a terrible ear infection caught somehow somewhere on this trip and I"m in severe danger of it affecting my eyes as well. So off to see the ENT people at the hospital, hopefully they'll be able to do something. In the mean time, I'm slowly moving into my office, which is going to be mine not much longer as I think that I'm just squatting the HoD's until they get a new one. Ah well......looking forward to getting on with some work. Still yet to pin down, who's going to be my superdupervisor.