You make photo of me!

Day two of the trip to the north of the island is now over and I’m exhausted. The three or four hours of sleep I got was not beneficial (hey, guess what! One of the guys snores and it’s about ten times louder than chainsaw girl!) but off we went anyway, to join a much larger group of people (25 plus our driver, Craig or Cossie), just after 7 in the morning.

The mood was a little bleak on the bus, partly due to the weather (the low-lying clouds didn’t really break until we got to 90 mile beach) and partly due to snorer/PartyBoy Victor. Or maybe that was just on my part, because while others appeared to be somewhat charmed by his “entertaining” ways,  I found him so completely annoying. You’re aware of my tolerance levels for certain groups of people? (If not, see previous blogs regarding Door-to-Door Catholics and Children-on-Airplanes). I don’t even know what category to put Victor into. He’s German, but I like Germans… I lived there for nine months and also, hello Sonja :P He’s a man… but I like (some) men. He snores… but so does my mum (sorry mum, but it’s true) so Victor is currently groupless. He’s also arrogant, chauvinistic, constantly late and thinks the world revolves around himself. Did I mention that he snores?

Tangent.

So after the clouds broke and we started to get some nice scenery, we drove up onto 90 Mile Beach (which is actually 64 miles long and there are many guesses as to why it’s called 90 Mile but I can’t remember what any of them are). And then we drove up the beach. At around 90 km per hour. Awesome. Stopped for some photos and for some brave souls to swim in the Tasman Sea (see PartyBoy, who also did handstands and took a ridiculous amount of time to get back on the bus - though this was pretty much a constant throughout the whole day).

Then was the sand boarding. Which looked like awesome fun… but involved braking at the bottom of the hill with your feet, specifically with your toes. Given that I smashed my big toe in a revolving door a little over a month ago (plus the knee thing which is still giving me grief), I decided to be photographer. Got some awesome pics of people coming down the hill and it was awesome to watch them, even if I was too chicken to join in :P

Lunch was at this awesome little beach that I haven’t a hope in hell remembering the name of and then it was off to the most northern point in New Zealand, Cape Reinga. Hoping that my photos are good… it was beautiful up there and the sun was blindingly awesome. Walked out to the most northerly lighthouse and then back on the bus.

We stopped at a few places to see stuff made with Kauri trees and got to hear about gum diggers which was pretty cool and a nice break. The woman who gave us a tour was pretty cool as well. And I fed some Shetland ponies while we were stopped there.

On the way back down, we stopped for some fush and chups (yum) and then it was back to Paihia. Absolutely exhausted. But had an awesome awesome day thanks to some of the guys I met on the tour (a couple from Poland and a couple from Ireland and Nikolaus from Germany).

But not Victor.

Bedtime for me (because I’m betting the snoring will be immense),
Kirsty
xxoo