The Kids

The next day was accompanied by beautiful sunshine first thing in the morning. The birds were again tweeting out their little tunes, the overnight rain still pattering down onto the empty gravel bays beside us (I had advised we get a bay that wasn’t under a tree otherwise we would get that loud “splat” of excess rainwater dripping off the tree well after it has finished raining), and three strangely-coloured wading birds were ambling past the campervan as I slung open the door to go and “break the seal”. Gooooooooooood mmmmmmmmmmooooooorning Whangerei! We ate breakfast and gathered our things for the long journey ahead of us. We would be leaving the gravel bay of the campsite for.......the camp site visitors parking area. This meant that we could “check-out” of the campsite and leave the camper there whilst we walked into the town centre to get us both a hair-cut.

The town centre at Whangerei is relatively small and has most shops that any Kiwi would need. Three barbers though? Really? Well, we found the one that looked the cheapest and bounded in to see what they could do with our mop-tops. $18 (and a rather disinterested conversation between James’s lady barber and himself) later we were looking dapper again and ready for whatever the day could throw at us. First up was the cheap tat shops in the town centre. We are always on the look-out for these as there is always something that we need and are always needing it on the cheap. On the shopping list: small chess/draughts game, shower gel, hot water bottles, torch, batteries and padlock (one of mine that I bought from Wilkinson’s seems to have locked itself and I can’t detach my zip-on bag from my main one). James bought some knock-off made-in-China stuff that had whole words missing from the sentences on the label and we both bought hot water bottles, mainly for when we hit the south island, but maybe just for a treat every now and again.  The rest we couldn’t find so we went back to the campervan to go and find Whangerei Falls.

We found them!

These falls are the most photographed waterfalls in all New Zealand. Apparently. I don’t know how they know this or if they do regular checks of people’s cameras as they leave each and every waterfall in the country, of which there are plenty. It was only a few minutes drive to get there and it absolutely did not disappoint. Some 26 meters high and with numerous little viewing platforms it is easy to see why it holds the accolade it does. And unlike the waterfall we saw in Yosemite National Park this one was bulging and heaving over the edge due to the wet nature of the climate. I got snapping at the first viewing platform whilst James wandered over the bridge above the falls. Remembering about the lack of any kind of health and safety at Haruru Falls the day earlier we weren’t entirely surprised to see that the bridge had absolutely no sides to it and was only a few feet away from the top of the waterfall. James made it across with no problems you will be pleased to hear.

The falls

As I clicked away on the trusty Canon Powershot G12 I noticed a small group of school children mingling around the water nearby. Not wanting to get into any form of communication with them I set off to catch up with James across the bridge. But as I passed the two girls sitting on the wall they called out to me to take their picture. It was obvious that I would then have their picture on my camera with no real way of getting it to them (I wasn’t about to start asking schoolgirls for their email addresses) so I asked if they would rather I took one on their phone instead. After one girl asked me to give her one of my wristbands (to which I said “no, it is mine”) they looked at me blankly as if I didn’t understand how cameras worked or something. So I set up to take their picture, and then another girl was ushered into the fray, and joined them on the wall. With each one of them doing a gangster pose and pouting into my lens I snapped them and showed them my effort. They seemed pleased enough with it and said that I should upload it to Facebook and they would be able to see it there. Now, they should know that we would have to be friends on Facebook for that to work and as we definitely are not friends (and never will be) I just smiled and said “yeah, will do” in a casual I-want-to-leave-this-conversation way. I caught up with James at the base of the waterfalls and he was obviously very pleased with such a story. After a few more shots of the falls we headed back into the campervan and plotted our route to Waipu.

The kids

The reason for hitting Waipu was two-fold: it was on our route, and there is a cave there. It says “Waipu Caves” in the guidebook but we bumped into a couple who had just come from the cave(s) and they said they only found the one there. We trekked across a very boggy field to get to the cave and once there it was a very spooky experience. James used his tiny torch to light his way and I used the Flashlight App on my phone (other apps are available) to see the way. It was pitch black in there and a wide stream was running through the cave, but we couldn’t pinpoint its location. Not until James put his foot in it....literally. After a few minutes of scrabbling about James had had enough so he went back outside. I stayed in to see how far in I could get. I was always going to play it safe as claustrophobia and a fear of drowning were always at forefront of my mind. And after a while my eyes became accustomed to the dark and it all seemed so bright in there. Well, bright enough for me not to need a torch anyway. And then, up in the shadows I noticed a tiny pin-prick of light going all the way up to the surface. I assumed that’s what it was as it was blue in colour. And then I saw another one, and another, and another. Then I realised that these must be the glow-worms I had heard about. I knew there were glow-worms in Waitomo Caves but they were miles away and we wouldn’t make it there on our trip but I had no idea that there would be some of the little blinkers in Waipu. A great little bonus.

Whatcha doin' in a cave???

On the way down the coast we stopped off at a few bays and beaches, which still hold their beauty even though we have stopped at so many already. We were driving down to Auckland again to the campsite that we had booked the previous night as it was a great little deal and we didn’t want to try and free-camp in Auckland as it may prove tricky. We drove past our first free-camp site on our first night but decided against visiting it as we needed to get a wriggle on. And it was just a dirt track. When we got into Auckland again it was rush-hour, again. The light was fading and I found myself darting about trying to get out of everyone’s way as they made their way home from work. We managed to find the campsite at the second point of asking – we drove past it first time, but I blame the map and the signposts in this country. We parked up and decided we should treat ourselves and go out for a meal as we were in civilisation again. After spurning the chance for a Mongolian buffet (at $25 a head it was a little too rich for us) we settled on the Chinese restaurant next door to the campsite. My motto is always “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” so I went for the Singapore style vermicelli noodle dish with 4 Vietnamese-style won-tons on the side. James ordered (after a little bit of “lost in translation”) deep-fried chicken and chips, with deep-fried calamari and deep-fried mussels. Well, it turns out that the menu was quite specific and when it said Mussel for $0.70 it meant exactly that. One single mussel. James had initially thought that he would be getting a little banquet of mussels and calamari but actually got one single calamari and one single mussel to go with the chicken and chips. I found it absolutely hilarious but to be fair it was a big mussel.