Dargaville Motel

... eingearbeitet, die 2 Stockwerke miteinander verbindet). Von dort ging es weiter nach Kaitaia. Waren im Freibad schwimmen, bei 21 Grad Lufttemperatur.. wir hatten das ganze Schwimmbad fuer uns allein, war eben kein Freibad Wetter.
Die Nacht haben wir in Ahipara auf einem Parkplatz verbracht.

So, das waren die letzten Tage, einmal kurz zusammen gefasst.
Hier ist jetzt auch das Regenwetter aus Muenster ...

... Dargaville where we stayed overnight in a converted school which really reminded us of our school days as it still has the little coat hooks etc in the main corridor (and a wicked piano that Mark enjoyed playing). In the Waipoua forest we saw an ancient tree (2 thousand years approx) which had a trunk girth of around 8m and sooo tall as well (see pictures). It absolutely blew our minds! REALLY BIG TREE!!

Dargaville: 45%

Greenhouse: 72%

Sorry for the lack of an update. It seems the internet isn't all the rage in NZ like it is in the US, so it's been tough getting on it. We spent all of last week in a town called Kerikeri. It's a town known for its orange and kiwi growing, so we had plenty of fresh orange juice. Unfortunately the first farm wasn't at all what we expected. We mostly had weeding and house work to do rather than organic farming. Luckily for us a ...

We just arrived here (Kauri top 10 campsite) last night and its really nice! Set in the heart of the country in lots of lovely vegetation about 30km from Dargaville. Our cabin is lovely with patio doors opening out on to our deck and the lush palms and ferns that are all around us and we are constantly bombarded by the noise of the cicadas which is very soothing I have to say. We have already ...

... had lunch at a lovely little place called Waterline Cafe then caught the ferry over to Rawene and drove to Oponon were we stopped at Opo Take Away and had a lovely Ice cream. We then drove to Omapere -South Head, Baylys Beach, Glinks Gully - Ripio Beach and I also went for a lovely walk at Arai Te Uru Recreation Reserve whilst Ian sat in the car. The we drove through Waipoua Forest past Tane Mahuta (Giant Kauri) but didn't stop this time as we didn't have ...

18th October - 20th October 2008 We set off from Waipapakauri around 4:45pm and after juicing up and getting supplies from Kaitaia we hit the road, highway 1 again, all the way down to Mangamuka where we left and headed west to Kohukohu. If we had had more time we would have stopped in Kohukohu for a look around but as we had stopped in Kaitaia for so long time was running short. Kohukohu is described in the book as 'Quick, someone slap a preservation order on Kohukohu ...

... s walk at several points. I stopped at a supermarket and stocked up for a couple of days, then continued north on the east coast, stopping briefly at Helensville and Dargaville and for the odd photo. The scenery was reasonably scenic, especially the coast around Kaipara Harbour and a couple of peaks. My first campsite is a fairly big commercial one ...

... about 20 degrees which sounded ok. IT WAS FREEZING. a bit of a shock when i jumped in the water, it took my breath away, must be why we had 7mm wetsuits which made me very buoyant!! Vern said later that he had to have 13kg instead of 6kg of weight on him due to the thick suits and found buoyancy control hard beacuse of it. I later noticed that one of the dive masters had a dry suit on for warmth! the diving/snorkelling was ok, really ...

... a shame that Dean didn't get to see much of them as he was concentrating on keeping the van on the road and not hurtling down the mountain. When we did eventually get to the forest, it is an 18km drive through a jungle-like, helter-skelter of a road. It has been raining and the road was steaming as the water evaporated in the heat. It looked weird - like the road was smoking. We eventually found the campsite and it is weird here. We are the only ones here and ...