The day of the Cape Reinga day trip dawned, and the weather seemed to be a good metaphor of how i was feeling after the previous night. It was grey and drizzly with fog. The first place we visited was a huge great big Kauri Tree in a natural Kauri forest. This was somewhere that the queen had visited, and they had built a wooden walkway especially for her visit. We took a short walk through the forest before heading back to the bus. The next stop was the town of Taipa, which is believed to be the first Maori landing point. We stopped there to pick up some lunch from the bakery, and to use the toilets, which were bogging! The doors didn't lock properly, they stunk and they were outside.We then headed straight onwards to Cape Reinga, which is believed to be the departure point for souls as they leave New Zealand and head towards the ancient lands of Hawaiki. When we arrived, we found that the fog had closed in completely, and we could only just se the lighthouse. We couldn't see the meeting of the sea, or the ancient tree form whose branches the souls apparently leap. I took a quick picture in my kilt, but was pretty disappointed with the lack of view. We clambered back aboard the bus, a bit downhearted, and our driver, Dice, told us not to worry, because the sand boarding would be fast and fun. To get to the Te Paki giant sand dunes we had to pass through the Te Paki stream, which was quite a bumpy ride. We stopped the bus right in the middle of the stream, on a sand bank, and we disembarked to try our hand at sand boarding. First we had some safety instructions, and we were warned not to dig our feet in if the sand was too hard packed by the rain, but it turned out to be quite soft, which made it easier to go slower, and harder to get up the sand dune. It was awful climbing up, as every few steps forward brought another step or two of sliding back. We reached the top and proceeded to throw ourselves down the dune on body boards. it was great, fast fun. On my first turn i lost grip of the board and stopped at the bottom of the slope by means of my face. It didn't help that I had been trying not to hit the idiot who was standing in my way. I got up, unscathed but with a faceful of sand, and headed back up the dune to try again. The next time I managed to hold on, and I made it all the way into the stream. Great success. That was me for sand boarding, however, as I couldn't quite summon the energy to try to get back up the dune again. After everyone had given up on the sand boarding, we got back on the bus and headed to the beach itself. We arrived and took a short drive along before stopping again for a photo op. A few of us (myself included) decided to go for a swim, and we took of into the Tasman Sea and jumped waves for a few minutwes. The water was cool and refreshing, and the waves were a great height for jumping. A short while later we were really motoring along the beach when the bus driver pointed out an arch of rock jutting out in the Tasman. 'See that', he announced, 'that's the real hole in the rock. At low tide, I can drive you through it. The one at Cape Brett is just a fiberglass copy, so the boats don't get scratched.' I should now explain to you that it is typical kiwi humor to make fun of tourists by telling them any old rubbish to see how much they believe. He also told us why Ninety Mile Beach, which is not 90 miles long, is called Ninety Mile Beach. There are two stories. The first is that the Aussies have an 80-mile beach. The second is that a ranch owner at Cape Reinga used to drive his bullocks to market down the length of the beach. he knew that the bullocks could travel 30 miles a day, and it took 3 days to cover the beach, so 90 mile beach. He forgot that bullocks walk slower on sand. I don't know which, if either, is true, so believe what you want. We kept on going down the beach, and eventually we pulled alongside one of the other companies' buses. We started to pull ahead, and they started to pull back, and we ended up drag racing. It was a bit futile, since both buses were the same model and engine capacity, but our driver used dirty tactics, and turned the air-con off to get 2 extra horsepower. We pulled ahead, and won the race. After we had left the beach we drove onward for another 20 minutes or so before reaching the Ancient Kauri Kingdom, a large gift shop which sells many different objects made from ancient kauri trees which have been found perfectly preserved in a swamp with the oldest workable timber ever found. I took a look around and found the prices to be extortionate, and although i was tempted to buy an egg made from the wood for $15, i decided not to bother. The last stop on the way home was at the Mangonui fish shop, which is supposedly world famous. Well, I don't know about world famous, but at $7 for a fish supper, it was certainly cheap. We spent about half an hour there before we headed back to Paihia. On my return I decided to try to get some accommodation for new years and stay in Paihia, and i found a bed for the night of the 1st in the YHA, so all I would have to do is pull an all-nighter over new years eve, something which I felt was doable. I then headed back to the base to phone Auckland and tell them the good news, when the receptionist at base told me that there was plenty of room there for all of the New Year period, because the last Kiwi bus had arrived with 27 less people than they had saved beds for. Result! I headed back to the YHA and quickly cancelled my booking. I then headed to the hostel pool for a little while. after this I decided that I needed to get some shopping, and I was going to walk along the bay to the Woolworth supermarket (no relation to the defunct British store) which was down by Waitangi, but I saw the bus going towards the treaty grounds for the night show. I decided to try to blag a lift, and it worked! The driver dropped me off right on the end of the supermarket's street. I managed to get quite a few good deals, such as 2 packs of sausages for $6, and a whole 700g block of un-iced Christmas cake for $2! I then took the walk back to the hostel and , felling shattered from the long day and the long walk, I had an early night.
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