The Invisible Cape

The only afternoon with good weather!
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So the Bay of Islands is meant to be the most beautiful place on the North Island and seeing that Michelle had already left for Santiago a few days ahead of me......rather than depress myself any further in gloomy Auckland all by myself, I decided to take a 3 day trip up to the Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga.......see some nice scenery and try something that I´ve wanted to do ever since I heard about it when I first arrived in New Zealand....SANDBOARDING!!!!! Whoo hoo!!!!

So yeah....Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga....well......remember my Milford Sound experience.....supposedly one of the most beautiful places on the South Island and what did I see because of the strong wind, pouring rain and ridiculous heavy fog...absolutely nothing.....well.....this was also how I saw Cape Reinga and the Bay of Islands....no I am not kidding....NZ must hate me or something.....the bad weather seemed to just follow me around (whereas my friend Annie who was travelling through NZ at the same time as me but in the opposite direction from Auckland to Christchurch only had one bad day of weather!!!!)

Looking out from town
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The first afternoon we got there, the weather was actually quite glorious....the sun shone brightly and it was....drum roll please.... warm!!!!  I had opted for an adrenaline filled, action packed,  high speed jet boat ride on the Excitor around the Bay of Islands thinking that I would have plenty of time later on in the trip to go swimming with the dolphins. Well, the er, boat was certainly fast....but to say it was enjoyable...well I would be lying through my teeth. Imagine gale force winds at what seemed like 100mph coming at you at full force so that your hair felt like it was about to be ripped off from your head, your face plastered like you´ve just had too much botox done and even with the protective sunglasses they provided your eyes were still watering from the wind so that there was absolutely nothing you could do except to squint them up until you could hardly see a thing......oh and not to mention it was bloody cold even beneath the huge rainmac they´ve given you!!! Well...imagine being like this for all of the 1.5 hour ride!!! So did I see the islands...bloody hell .NO!!!! Haha......I should have taken this as a warning and just given up then and there hey?!!!

Famous Hole in the Rock.....haha...original name hey?
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(And before anyone says that maybe I should have opted for the dolphin swimming instead....I think we were all given a warning for the next couple of days.....haha...they didn´t see any dolphins!!! So they either rescheduled or got half their money back!).

The second day was our day trip from the Paihia (Bay of Islands) to Cape Reinga right at the northern tip of the North Island. As soon as we got up, we knew that the weather was going to be bad......the sky was so grey and overcast.....and surprise surprise (not)....it just got worse as we started driving up north. By the time we got to Ninety Mile Beach (so called but not actually 90 miles in distance), it was raining like there was no tomorrow. And our driver (who was really wacky in the head....he would start cackling for no apparent reason at all!!!) decided that this was also the perfect time to go boarding down the gigantic sand dunes there!!! So you can imagine 30 odd people in a random assortment of bikini tops, t-shirts, jeans, shorts, combats, skirts and rain macs trying to climb up this huge sand dune in the pouring rain desperately holding onto these body boards which everytime the wind blew hard against the board would almost topple over the person!!!! Haha....I was wearing my rainmac over my t-shirt and had rolled up my combats so that they were like shorts!!! And it was such a mucky affair......wet clothes and wet sand......not to talk about wet everything else.......everyone was just like...come on...let´s get this done and back on the coach again!

View from inside a cave of one of the islands
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But oh my god...sand boarding was so so so so so so much FUN!!!!!! Basically, you lie on your front on the body board using your hands to hold onto the front of the board and your arms bent at the elbow to hold up and support your upper body. To ensure that you could control your board and not go flying down the dune and out of control, you used your feet as brakes by digging your toes into the sand. If you wanted to slow down, all you had to do was dig your toes into the sand more and if you wanted to go faster....just lift your toes out of the sand abit more. It was easier said than done though....I only have little toes and the sand was wet so it was difficult to dig my toes in. So many times did my board almost tilt to one direction as I went flying down the sand and me desperately trying to straighten myself out and not lose control!!!!

This was what we had to wear on the Excitor
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Cape Reinga itself was the biggest joke of the day. Our driver had not wanted to take the bus up the steep narrow and winding roads up to the cape as the bus was not really built for this and a few months ago, the bus had actually toppled over to one side driving down from the Cape in similar weather. But rather than to compensate us, his company pretty much told him that he had to go up there! And what a joke it was!!! Google Cape Reinga and see what it should look like normally! The Cape was almost invisible to us!!! We could not see past a few metres from us and the lighthouse.....haha....I basically could only see the outline of it in the fog and rain!!!!! In fact I recorded us on my camera walking the track to the lighthouse and it´s pretty hilarious......us in our rainmacs....struggling against the gale force winds and rains....and absolutely nothing in sight except for fog, fog and more fog!!!!

Cheers!
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What was quite fun was back on Ninety Mile Beach, the driver stopped and got us to dig for shellfish in the sand. These Tua Tua shellfish.....they looked like mussels but inside....a old leather tongue....and eugh...you could eat them raw like oysters! After digging them up and throwing them into a bucket of water.....the tua tua would clean itself with one snorkel taking in the water and the other snorkel squirting out the sand. After a few minutes, the driver then got out his penknife, cut open the shell and handed the tua tua like a mussel around for everyone to try!!!!!

Just the girls
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The weather did not let up on the last day of our trip either. Paihia has always been thought of as the birthplace of NZ....for this was where all the chiefs of the Maori tribes came together to make an agreement with the British all those years ago.....and thus NZ as we know it was born. Unfortunately, despite my wanting to indulge myself in alittle Maori history......the rain and wind just would not let me.....and instead everyone sat around the hostel just like kids at school not allowed out in the playground because of the rain. But it was nice as a group of us cooked lunch and so it was another bonding session for all of us!

This was me at Cape Reinga!
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Haha...talking about bonding session. I had decided to do this 3 day trip with the Kiwi Experience after the non eventful 3 weeks that we had with the Magic Bus people. I had been warned that people on the Kiwi Experience bus were younger and were party party party!!! Haha......that is true!!! Although not in a bad way!!! They are just tons more fun!!!!!

The first night, there was a BBQ followed by a pub quiz. Due to the size of our group, we were split into two teams and ours......with 6 girls and one (very lucky) guy were aptly named ´Six Prostitutes and A Pimp´! Haha!!! We had a great old time.......I even downed my first Jaegerbomb!! (Seriously, am I one of the few people who think that they go down quite easily!!!) And we won!!! Haha!!! A $50 bar tab!!!!! Which would have been good had this stupid guy (who wasn´t even on our team) drank it all up until 4am trying to pull the Canadian girl in our team!!!! We didn´t even know that he had drank our tab until he confessed the following day on the Cape Reinga trip!!! Oooh I was mad and so were a few others!!!! We had been saving the tab for the following night when we would not have to get up for a 7am trip start!!!!

Can just make out the lighthouse!!!
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So the second night, we were without our bar tab but it still wasn´t enough to stop us from having a good time as we descended onto a Blind Date and Karoke night......yep, I went to a Karoke night....but despite hard efforts from some of the guys, I only sang once and that was a group effort!!! Believe, with my voice...they should have been grateful I didn´t do a solo!!!! I would have scared off all the customers!!!!!