The story of the trip up north

I apologise in advance; this is almost certainly going to be a very, very long post but frankly, it's worth it.  I just hope my wit doesn't fail me.

So, first off, the background info (crucial, obviously) is that three of us from my hostel decided to go on a little road trip to the Bay of Islands (staying in Paihia) and to Cape Reinga, which is the northernmost tip of New Zealand and where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea.  The two blokes I went with will forthwith be referred to as GadgetGuy and TheGuitarist.  GadgetGuy is German and so named because, oh my gosh, he has SO many gadgets for everything.  It's awesome.  And gadgety.  TheGuitarist is a Canadian guy who is actually a drummer but he's being called TheGuitarist because on his like third day here he went and bought a guitar (he can play that too) and he's been playin' ever since.  It's also quite cool.

On Wednesday morning we set off up to Paihia and through the windy, potholed roads of New Zealand.  The countryside was absolutely stunning; rolling hills, forests, fields: it was awesome.  We were uber lazy when we got to Paihia in the afternoon so we just bought some food and went and had an amazing platter at a bar in the town.  Oh, so in the whole of the Bay of Islands there are 2000 inhabitants and frankly Paihia is, in many ways, a perfect illustration of the hell that is small town living.  Especially in comparison to Auckland, which is a real 24 hour city, it was small, parochial and absolutely dead.  Everything closed at 8pm.  In the evening we had some beers at the hostel, played some cards and listened to music and then went to a local bar (I think there are 4 in total) and had a beer and played a game of pool.  Then TheCanadian and I went down to the beach (2 minutes away) and sat for ages, listening to the water lapping against the shore and chatting.  That was pretty cool.

Thursday we all woke up really late, which is bizarre and bad but we spent the afternoon walking along the beach nearby and looking out over the view to the islands and the other parts of the mainland and in the evening we cooked an AMAZING meal of steak and potatoes and salad.  It really was wonderful.

We decided to go up to Cape Reinga on Friday morning, so we set off really early and it was, oh my gosh, AMAZING.  There's a cute little town called Mangonoui on the way up and we stopped there for the best fish and chips you will ever have in your life.  Truly, the meal was splendiferous.  Then we went off again up to Cape Reinga.

Now, I'm not one of those really cheesy types about the world around me. I appreciate beautiful things but in many ways on a purely objective basis.  I ACTUALLY cried at Cape Reinga.  It's sad, I know, but oh my gosh, it's the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.  Basically, the Tasman Sea is blue and the Pacific Ocean is green and so where they meet it's like waves lapping up against each other but also the colours sort of mix.  If you've got a half decent monitor, you'll be able to see it in this photo.

It's really, really incredible - I can't put into words the extent to which this is true but trust me.

We climbed a little hill and looked out over the top.  I also found out I'm 18000km from London.  I thought it was 12000 miles but I'm pretty sure that works out to be 10800 miles, which brings me 1200 miles closer.  Good times.

Obviously you can't go any further than this so we headed back to Paihia (by the way it's like a three hour drive from Paihia to Cape Reinga).  Unfortunately, we had a minor, minor, minor incident which involved reversing into a car (long story to do with a one way bridge) BUT after a few minutes of panic, luckily this woman was just like, 'Hey, I'm a member of the yacht club, they do food, you can buy me a beer and we're all good,' so we went to the yacht club (which happened to be in Mangonoui as well) with her and she was AWESOME.  She's from Guam but lived in New Caledonia with her French husband and has been all around the Pacific Islands and was talking about growing up on Guam and whatnot... she was really cool and it could have been horrible but the bump just knocked a bit of plastic out, which TheGuitarist clipped back in and it was all good.

By the time we left Mangonoui it was dark and obviously we were then on these twisty, dark country roads but it meant you could see the stars and, my god, that was AMAZING.  I'm so used to being in the city where you can see about 12 stars at a time that this was a huge novelty and I was just gaping at them for a good 30 minutes.  Actually, I've just thought about it.  To be honest, I've probably seen lots of stars in the sky before but normally when it's dark and I'm outside that means I've been drinking so stars aren't really on my mind at that point.

Then this morning we left a beautiful day - sunny, a few tiny clouds in the sky - to come back to Auckland where it's raining!  But in any case, the trip was absolutely fantastic and Cape Reinga was awesome in the true sense of the word.

Here's a link to my photos of the trip:Northlands Road Trip