Kia Ora!
(Hello in Maori)
So I am currently sitting in a tent approximately 10km south
of Whangarei (pronounces something close to “fungwheh”…who knew?) It is Friday here, and Thursday back in the
states. I am ecstatic at the idea of
seeing the sun rise before anyone else in the world on Friday, October 07,
2011… How did I get 150km north of Auckland already do you ask? Well we picked up “Rudy the Rhino”, as he
will now be referred, yesterday in Auckland, and headed North for a bit of
time. In addition to Rudy, we also
painlessly obtained bank accounts, tax IRD numbers, a AAA membership (called AA
here), and a cell phone. I can’t
emphasize enough how smoothly and inexpensive these things are here compared to
the states. $109 for a blackberry type
phone + sim, $29 a month for 160 min, 2500 txts, and 50mb of data for e-mail,
ect.(which may seem like nothing but we really only use it for calling
campgrounds.
So back to the good stuff!
We are camping on the beach, and when I say beach I mean on the sand
dunes of the Pacific Ocean. It is more
beautiful and serene than anything I’ve ever seen, and after my first night
camping, I feel confident I could do this for another month. We paid $8NZD a person to the campsite, and
had no trouble putting up our tents at all.
We were not allowed to burn a fire at this particular spot, but luckily Adam
had MSR Pocket Rocket, or simply, a camping stove. We cooked up some soups and bread for dinner,
and indulged in my personal stash of M & M’s for dessert…Hehehe.
Today we are exploring the Waipu caves and possibly some
falls outside of Whangarei. As soon as I
get some free wi-fi I will upload all the pictures on a Flickr account and link
it to the blog. For now, I am uploading these blog entries on the 3G we had
setup on Bethy’s ipad, and she has limited upload allowance for now.
Cheers!
I'm a bit upset I haven't seen a picture of Barney's replacement. Rudy the Rhino needs some face time with that camera.
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