Back To Reality

It’s such an amazing feeling to wake up in the morning and realise that there isn’t another human being around for miles and miles. Save for the one up in the top bed, of course. But as we stirred and stretched our legs we knew we had eventually found a great spot as no other traffic had come down that road all night. The sound of rain on the top of the roof had woken us a little bit, but only because we were both fearing getting stuck in the mud and not being able to get Tony (the Toyota) out of the forest. Maybe we would have to catch some wild horses and ride our way to civilisation? In the end we pulled away without any fuss so the potential horse adventure was averted.

Our home for the night

Our first task that day was to get out of the forest and off that bloody gravelly road. We achieved this in no time and soon set course for the Bay of Islands, which is supposedly amazing scenery. We made excellent progress once we were back on the proper highways and didn’t have to swerve and weave our way down the road in third gear. Our first stop was to be Paihia on the north east coast of the island. As we missed another turning we arrived a little later than anticipated but we were treated to a fantastic view of the Bay of Islands area. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side and it had been cloudy and raining all day. Although the sight was great I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have looked like in blazing sunshine and without a cloud in the sky. After stopping off for lunch on the beach we continued up the coast to try and find Haruru Falls. For once we found it with ease and as we pulled into the small parking area adjacent to the falls we decided that we should wait for the rain to let up before getting out of the campervan. After 10 minutes it didn’t look like the rain would ever stop so we made a dash for it, each under our own golf umbrella. It was pretty impressive for something that wasn’t really hyped up that much. And there was nobody else around to see it or get in our way either, probably because it was the off-season but most likely because it was hoying down with rain. Very similar to Horseshoe Falls at Niagara, but very much scaled down, it packed a punch and we stood well back from the slippery rocks as there was absolutely no barrier to prevent anyone from falling into the churning broth below.

Wet wet wet

We knew that we would be making camp at Whangerei, south of the Bay of Islands, and we wanted to get there nice and early to book a plot and get some much-needed laundry done, so we departed Haruru Falls in good spirits and hit the highway. The journey was pretty much uneventful, and thankfully not too long as we arrived at the campsite (holiday park) at around 4pm. In addition to the laundry that was well overdue our barnets also needed a chop and we thought we might be able to squeeze one in at Whangerei before they closed but thought better of it as we had plenty of time the next day to do it. So James went for a walk in the rain and I set about making camp in our little gravel bay, well away from any other campervans in case Club Mickey were in town (Club Mickey = a noisy group of people, a reference from our family trips to France in the 80’s). Before we sat down to dinner I went for a hot shower that was also well overdue. Good facilities, nothing amazing but definitely did the job. And as I stepped out of said shower dripping water onto the rubber bath mat underneath my feet I realised something terrible had happened. One thing you should always, ALWAYS do when showering in a campsite is remember to take your towel with you. As I had forgotten mine in haste I had to use my trousers to rub myself dry, clamber into my clean clothes, head back to the campervan to retrieve my towel and then return to the shower room to finish off towelling myself dry. I certainly didn’t want to catch a cold down here and a head full of wet hair is one way to go about it, so I was glad when the glaring error had been corrected and I could sit down to dinner cleansed and crossing my fingers that a cold wasn’t heading my way.