Rainbows

Today was another day of fishing with Fishy Steve. We have stayed at his family's house for 3 nights. They have made amazing food every night.

Last night was fajitas, homemade salsa, guacamole, etc. (Mexican food is a rarity in NZ) and tonight was home made pizza. This is amazing after a long day of fishing. Today, Steve took us on an outback adventure. We were walking through the bush up and down the Mohaka River. We only went "swimming" once. The rocks were slippery and as the river got deeper and faster we lost our footing and the water poured into our waders.

Nobody was hurt, we didn't lose any gear, so it ended up being a good day! Of course Mojdeh hooked a giant Brown Trout in the first few minutes and as she brought it close to shore, it threw out the hook and got away.

Fishy Mojdeh (?)

We left Auckland as soon as we could. Hearing that South Auckland is the sketchier part of town, we decided to take a bus and avoid the hitching for a bit. We skipped Rotorua and went straight to Lake Taupo. I have heard of this town because this is where they hold Ironman New Zealand in March. Their half IM is coming up in December. There is a also a 160 km bike race next week. Every Monday there is a small and casual duathlon. Quite an athletic town.We stayed in town the first night until we heard about a free campsite about an hour walk outside of town.

 It started pouring rain when we set off for our free campsite.

Eventually, the weather cleared and it has been more like summer every day. The nights are chilly. Our free campsite is right next to a river. There is a natural hot spring not far from our camp. We took advantage of that!

Here I am getting water at night out of the river.

After a couple of nights we booked a half day fly fishing guide. We set out on the Waitahanui River in the afternoon (after Mojdeh's bday) kind of groggy. We quickly woke up to the biggest trout that we have ever seen. 

Our guide "Fishy Steve" turned out to be much more fun than we ever could have hoped.  He helped us land some amazing Rainbow Trout. He then took pity on us and invited the backpackers back to his place for a hot shower and a fantastic home cooked meal.

I know this will make some people jealous!

 

The next day, we couldn't help but go out fishing for a full day with Steve. He got us into some great fish. The scenery was breathtaking, but we refused to stop focusing on the fish. It paid off!

This is my biggest fish of the trip... so far. We bought a fly fishing rod and we are going to put it to the test tomorrow.

 

Thanks to "Fishy Steve" for a great time! Check out www.fishysteve.com to see his cool web site.

Another vid.

We belong...

Here is a short clip that I made of our mussel collecting trip.


After leaving Paihia, we went to Kerikeri so that I could runa  half marathon. I was happy with the 1:33:00 that I pulled off without training. We were trying to hitch home, but the race was still going on. That made things difficult and we were about to give up when a van with a bunch of Christian kids on a weekend church outing pulled up and offered us a ride all the way to Auckland (4 hours). The first song that they put on  was "Weeeee bellllooooong to Jeeeeesus."

Mussels hunters

In Paihia, we took some kayaks to one of the hundreds of islands (hence the name Bay of Islands) and went collecting mussels.

Throwing them on the barbecue, Mojdeh had a pasta with mussels, clams and veggies. I stuck to the veggies.

We have come to the small town of Kerikeri for tomorrow's half marathon. After that, the plan is to hitch back to Auckland.

Today was our first day where the weather feels like summer. This is our tent by the river.

Not close to being up to date!

What an exciting few days. In Auckland, we found a map, asked a climber how to get out of the city, and headed North. We grabbed a bus from Auckland to Waiwera. From there we hitched (Kiwi term for hitchhiking) as far as we could in a day. The first guy that picked us up was a really fun guy from South Africa that had been living here for about 8 years. He was enthusiastic and it made us feel good to get a lift from someone like him.

He dropped us off at Warkworth where we didn't wait long for someone else to help us out. In fact, a few people stopped, but weren't going our direction. The brother sister couple that picked us up were going further than we thought we would make it. We set our sights on a town called Whangerai. (Sometimes pronounced Fahng-gurh-ay or Wung-er-ay.) Out side the Swinging Goat Cafe a man named George from Essex, England picked us up. He had sailed to New Zealand 20 years ago taking 2 years on a sailboat. He set out looking for adventure. I feel like we can relate to that. He said that he had spent time hitching around New Zealand when he first arrived so he knew what we were going through. He dropped us off at the tourist office in Whangerai. We had made it much further than we had hoped to make it and we feel like we are starting to see the New Zealand that we came looking for. At the tourist information area, we found a hostel/camper van/tent place near Whangerai Falls.

 

They advertised a bbq, hot tub, and they would pick us up free of charge. Sounded too good to be true. It wasn't. A wonderful British lady and her Kiwi husband run the Whangerai Falls Backpacker and it is worth a trip for anyone up this way.

Having a gas bbq was too much to not use, so we got a bottle of wine, grilled some meat, had an appetizer of hummus and french bread, and ate solid food for the first time in a while. Then we sat in the hot tub with our new friend Gerry from Dublin. We have met a few characters along our travels, and we laugh every day at our experiences.
The next day, we made the standard breakfast of oatmeal and tea, and headed off for the waterfall.

It did not disappoint. The walk into town was an hour and a half of absolute beauty. We followed a stream and found out how to use the "panorama" function on our camera.

Leaving Whangerai, we headed a bit further north towards the town of Whananaki. It is a small beach community that was desolate on the weekend that we visited. We stayed for two nights and had to rough it on another beach that we had all to ourselves. We met a couple of surfers that told us that the east winds bring them surf. We had lots of wind until the day that we left, but never got a chance to surf. From there we headed even more north to the bigger town of Paihia. It is situated at the Bay of Islands. All along the way we have been hitching with ease. We have waited about a half an hour at the longest (according to local hitchers 20 minutes is average). In Paihia, we found that there is a half marathon coming up this weekend. To prepare, I went for a 10k run. I got a bit turned around and ended up doing closer to 20k. I haven't run a in a few weeks, so my legs are a bit tired, but at least I know that I should be able to complete the race. The run was beautiful. Along the beach, by a golf course, through the forest, over the mangroves, looking for Kiwi birds the whole time.

Aotea (Great Barrier Island)

We took a three day trip out to Aotea, or Great Barrier Island.
Day 1 - Got up early and walked down to the pier to catch our ferry to the island. As we walked, we kept seeing people with numbers pinned to their shirts. I asked a typically friendly Kiwi if there was a run today. Apparently, I missed the Auckland Marathon. They also had a half, quarter and 5k. Bummer. We got to cheer on the runners on our way to the boat. We got on board with quite a few different characters including a nice Kiwi couple, white trash family that let their dog pee all over, and a couple from a country that we couldn't place the language. It began very sunny which gave my forehead it's first mild burn. (I should have listened to the Department of Conservation ranger when he recited all the pertinent information for Northern Hemisphere people about how much stronger the sun is here.)

Almost 5 hours later, the dolphins guided into the harbour near the small town of Tryphena on GBI.
We heaved our loaded backpacks on our backs, and headed down the only road. We weren't sure exactly where we were headed. We had no reservations anywhere, but thought that we wanted to camp somewhere near the beach. 10 minutes into our walk, the nice Kiwi couple from the ferry pulled up and offered us a lift into Tryphena.

The town consisted of a couple buildings and an Irish pub. We walked past all of it and headed to the other side of the island for a place called Medlands Beach. We knew that there was a campsite and a beach. Sounded perfect. My guess is that it's about 10k to Medlands Beach. The road climbs about 300 meters. As we neared the top, a lively local stopped and offered us a ride. He told us that his wife works on the golf course twice a week and he was on his way to pick her up. (He was very friendly.) He introduced himself as Buster and was very proud to show us how beautiful his island is. He has lived here for 30 years and said that he recently returned from Auckland. "Holy Hell" was all that he could say about it. GBI has about 1,200 residents. Auckland has 1.2 million.

We set up our tent, the weather was nice and we made some food. Then we went out to explore Medlands Beach. We didn't see another person on the beach all day.

Day 2 - We woke up today with nothing to do. What a great feeling. After making tea, eating some fruit and nut bars, we walked along the road to see what was out there. We walked for about an hour to the next beach (Kaitoke Beach) where we sat down and ate sandwiches. Kaitoke Beach was much longer than our beach, Medlands. We walked back to our camp and were picked up along the way by a friendly, but a bit smelly construction worker, Tobias. We haven't been hitchhiking yet, these people are so friendly, that they see you walking and just ask if they can take you somewhere. After such a strenuous morning, we crawled into our sleeping bags and took a long nap. Then we got up and made some dehydrated mashed potatoes and walked along the beach again. Mind you, this isn't like the beach in Hawai'i that I am used to, we wear all of our layers and I still haven't touched the ocean since we got here. (We saw a stingray and giant jellyfish within 3 meters of each other and Medlands Beach the first day that we arrived!)

We found a bench that overlooks the the ocean so we sat and had our tea there this afternoon. There was a half dozen people on the beach today. We had to pass some of them twice as they were walking the length of it as well. Being so crowded (it's only 2-3 km long) we retired to our campsite (we are the only people there) and made some tortellini. We found in the grocery store pouches of food that are already made and just needs to be heated. We boil some water, place the foil pouches inside and 5-10 minutes later, we have decent food! Tonight was two kinds of tortellini, one with mushrooms and bacon, the other with sun dried tomatoes and bacon.I guess they like their bacon here. The ferry ride back to Auckland is supposed to take twice as long as we stop by another town on the island first, Port Fitzroy.
Day 3 - We tried to lighten our packs by eating as much food that needed to be cooked as possible. That means that breakfast consisted of more mashed potatoes and some chicken satay flavoured ramen. We began our walk from Meldands Beach back to Tryphena. A nice Japanese woman that has been living on GBI for five years picked us up (these people are so friendly and talkative) and gave us a lift to the "city centre". It consisted of a post office/tourist shop, a general store (we picked up supplies for PB&J), and an awesome cafe that had french toast to die for. We hung out drinking tea until it was time to catch the ferry. We gave ourself an hour, but it clearly wasn't going to be enough time to get there. Luckily, our our friend Tobias (not so smelly today, construction worker) came flying by in a huge truck and picked us up. Like a roller coaster he flew to the port in a truck that took up the whole road. We only clipped another vehicle once, but he got us there on time. Mojdeh has more faith in people, but I think that he was still on the same meth high from the last time we saw him. Either way, we were safe on our ferry. I will spare you the details as this post drags on, but the weather got better as we left, dolphins popped up from time to time to show off, and the ride was nearly 12 hours. We did meet a nice Swiss couple that has just finished studying law here in Auckland. Now we need to get some more food, fuel, and a map. Tomorrow, we walk north.