Back in Auckland (the english version)

So here we are again,
We where touring the north side of the North Island last week and pass auckland on the way down. Next stop should be near Rotorua. Where it smells like farts apparently! We'll let you know if it did.

As you can tel ( by the pictures) we have been bussy. The day after our last update we went to visit Waipoua forest. This forest is known for its kauri trees. Kauri trees are huge, one of the biggest ones was 30 metres tall. Try and get a snapshot of that! Needless to say, the tree is rather old!

The day after, we went to Cape reinga. This is the most Northern point of New zeeland. Next stop, South Pole! We stayed at a campsite at the bottom of the cliff that night and got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I am not joking. As we where trying to eat they where flying into our mouths. Have never seen so many of them together. We where in our tents for 9 pm.
Apparently everyone else in New Zeeland knows about this! And theres us thinking we had found a beautifull nearly deserted beach!

Next day we where off to 90 mile beach and Tepaki sand dunes. Believe me, the sand dunes are not like the litterboxes we have at home. It is like standing in the middle of a dessert, after a 10 min walk from a woodland area.
We got some nice shells from this beach for the challenges.

After the sandy dunes, we wanted to do some sailing, so we went of to the nearest information center. We found some info about the `snow cloud` a small sailing ship that was made by its captain and they offered a fullday sailing, fishing, snorkeling. Just what we where looking for, so as the adress on the card wasn`t far we thought we would go straight to their office and book it instaid of calling them.

After about 10 min we reached the road, it started at number 10 and we needed 804. After a while the tarmack on the road stopped and half an hour later we finally arrived. At the captains house, apparently Chris and Marrianne as we now know them, do not have an office! They thought we where highly amuzing and invited us to have a cup of tea.
So we booked a boattrip for monday and stayed to have tea and bisquits.

After that we still had to find a place to sleep, driving and calling around to different places, everything seemed pretty full. However one youthhostel could fit us into the farmhouse because another family had cancelled! When we arrived at the kahoe farm hostel we where really happy the other family did not get there. The farmhouse was a beautifull house , that was built by the owners swedish grandfather. It was like stepping back in time! We had fresh pizza for dinner that was made by the owner. (the guy standing next to the belgian flag, see pictures challenges)
And sat chatting to some really nice people during dinner.

The next day we started looking for another campsite, and found one near Keri keri. When we arrived there was a really cool old camper what used to be a fire engine. so we put our tents next to it. The people came from holland and so we sat in the shade of the camper having a beer and a chat. They had started travelling after retiring, and took the van with them! We changed Adresses so if they read this, thanks for the books, and good luck on the rest of your Journey!

Monday morning we set of early for our day sailing. There was only 6 (canadian couple joined us) of us on the boat so it was nice. There was not a lot of wind so we took our time wich was good for the tummies. Around lunchtime we ankered and went snorkeling. It was a lovely day but we did not catch any fish. We had the lines out the whole time but the fish did not want to know. We`l have another go soon.

Tuesday we visited the Waitangi treaty grounds. This is a really important place in New Zeelands History. And it was good to learn something about it. A lot has happened in a really short period of time, the most impressive thing was the house that has no name, it has some beautifull maori carvings in it.

After that we went to the Wangarai falls, A nice walk, and on the way back we saw some idiots actually jumping of them, apparently some people have been killed doing this. Thankfully these men didn`t.

And so that brings us to yesterday, wich was interesting. We set off in the morning to go for a walk along a beach. When we got there someone reversed into the front of twalf(the car). He did not have any insurance and was drunk. So we coppied his ID wrote down his numberplate. Then we made him take us to the nearest garage so we could see what the damage was and made it clear that he was paying for it.
The mechanic said it was only a couple of scrapes and that we only needed to touch the paint up. We decided we would like this, so we made the guy take us to the place where they touch up the paint on cars.( another half an houres drive away) They did it free of charge so there was nothing really wrong with it. In the end this guy payed for us to go to the car wash and gave us 200 dollars worth of fuel vouchers, because he felt so guilty. And we got 2 bottles of wine out of it to. So in the end all worked out well and its another adventure to add to the list.

That is all the news for now and we will update soon.
For those who are curious to what our challenges are you can check out this site. Kikskesatwork.blogspot.com. There are some other photos there to, so its worth having a look.
For the people we meet along our way, any help is welcome. thanks.

BYE BYE for now