1st March 2008

Today, Sarah, Ashley, Kelly and I went to Cape Reinga, though I nearly didn't as Glen failed to book me on it due to a mix up with dates. Weather was awful, and our first stop was a random Kauri forest which was apparently owned by the crown (i.e. The Queen). This meant when the queen came over, she wanted to see her trees, so they had to hurriedly build a walkway and lay a red carpet down. Obviously, there's no red carpet now, but we trudged around the magnificent trees, Sarah in her crazy white poncho.

Our next stop was at Taipa Bay to grab some food and take in the wet and windy view. I got some crazy awesome breakfast sarnie quite cheap and took some obligatory photos. After a bit more of a drive we arrived at the 90 mile beach, which we promptly drove along. It's actually only 60 miles long, due to guestimates, and is actually a classified highway. Which makes it the oldest highway in the world, as well as the newest (as its resurfaced every day). How we laughed. Bus coped with it fine as long as it drove on the hard wet sand. We stopped for a photo op. and it was mad windy. Then carried on towards the sand dunes, I had a great view the entire time as I was right at the front of the bus. To get to dunes we drove through what was basically a river running into the sea, crazy stuff. Piled out and scaled a huge dune, which had a raging swirling twisting wind on top, that DROVE sand in your skin, eyes, nose, ears, mouth etc. Quite painful. The sand boarding itself was only just worth it, but great fun, even though I was crap and screwed up the steering, resulting in a double 360 spin on the way down, crazy stuff. Another bus driver could go down so fast that he aqua-planed across the river at the bottom without getting wet! He was mad though.

After getting rid of as much sand as possible we carried on towards the end of New Zealand and Cape Reinga. The roads were so muddy and just dirt tracks that the driver managed to drift the 11.5 metre bus at one point! Great Fun. Once we got there, we took the incredibly muddy and windy walk to the lighthouse in Jandals. Kelly and I totally lost ours at various points and just walked bare foot in the end. By the lighthouse it was nice but felt like we were gonna be blown away and it seemed like some of the metal signposts point to international cities had been blown off! Crazy. We only just got back to the bus in time because of more Jandal issues.

On the way back we stopped at Kauri Kingdom, which is basically a big Kauri tree souvenir shop. Once we got back I just chilled and finished 1984 by George Orwell, great book. Read it if you can.