Paihia, Cape Reinga, and a Rock with a Hole In It

This girl is on the road again! My British friend Amy and I picked up and went north on a 7:45 am bus from Auckland to Paihia. I basically had no idea what the plan was, since Amy was my volunteer travel agent. Turns out we're staying in this adorable beach town, in a hostel dorm room we miraculously got all to ourselves. We got some pizza, went for a walk, then spent the night in the hostel bar. We hung out with two guys from Liverpool and played the "guess that person's nationality" game over Malibu and pineapples and Pipi bombs (still not exactly sure what those were...).

The next morning we got up at silly o'clock for the Cape Reinga day tour. The driver was this crazy Maori dude who spoke in an intense story-telling tone of voice when he wasn't singing to us. I didn't much understand what he said, but I think he was a pretty solid guy. The bus headed north, stopping first at the ancient and giant Kauri trees, the biggest of which have been chopped down by dumb white people. Tourists now must settle for average-sized impossibly huge trees.

Next we drove along the 90 Mile Beach that isn't 90 miles.

Some of you might have heard that Kiwis have a tendency to make up crazy sports. Our crazy Kiwi sport of the day was sandboarding, which is basically boogie boarding down giant sand dunes.

We kept bussing all the way up to the northernmost point in New Zealand, Cape Reinga. Maori people believe that spirits of the deceased enter the underworld through this point. The spot is truly breath-taking, definitely somewhere to go before you die...or when you die.

On the way back I fell asleep and woke up to Amy  nudging me and saying, "hey, do you want to see a bunch of tables carved out of trees?" I thought she was joking, but there's literally a tourist place for crap carved from Kauri trees. I'm pretty sure most wooden tables are carved from trees, and even some staircases come from real trees.

Nonetheless, people pay money for special wooden souvenirs from this place.

We went to sleep around 9:00 as all the other backpackers partied through the night downstairs...and I'm not even embarrassed about it. Sleep is my friend.

Today we did the Hole in the Rock cruise tour something or other, designed entirely around seeing a famous rock with a hole in it. Far more interesting, though, were the adorable dolphins swimming around the boat the whole time. They were beautiful, graceful, and according to the boat driver, were in the act of mating. There were many children on the boat, and I'm happy to report that dolphin porn doesn't look dirty at all.

The cruise dropped us off at Russell, another little beach town with a few shops and an internet café...which you have to thank for this long-overdue post. Tomorrow we plan to go to a Maori culture museum, then bus back to Auckland. I have about a week left of work on Waiheke before leaving to travel south.

Some final food for thought...