eNZed - Day 2 (16-5-5)

Woke up and ate gold kiwis.. yum. Next thing we knew it was off to the next thing we could find.. a toilet, teethbrushing, and face washing. The scenery was beautiful too.

After that, we had one thought: 90 Mile Beach. Off we went north, hoping that maybe we would get out of the rain in that direction.

In Whangerei (fang-a-ray), we stopped for some food and ended up wandering around trying to decide how good of a meal we really wanted. After much deliberation and vetoing of fish and chips (fush and chups) on my part, we decided on an Irish Pub for brunch. It was here that I first stumbled on the feijoa.. *sigh* ..it went something like this,

"hey what's feijoa juice?"

"oh, it's kind of an acquired taste.. wouldja like a wee taste? Kiwi's luv it of course."

That was it, I was hooked. They taste (if you can imagine this) something like a pear on the front end, then this sweet flavor fillls your mouth and the best way I've figured out to describe it is ambrosia. YUM!! The juice can be rather rich though, so it's definitely good that it had plenty of ice.

After brunch, A scampered off to buy us all a pot so that boiling water would not be the slow torture it was last night trying to use the frying pan. Especially with no lid. In the rain. We then enjoyed a nice walk around town in the rain.

After Whangarei, we stopped to stretch and hike at a little turn-off towards Opua (oh-poo-uh). The hike turned out to be a lot of up and down without any sweeping vistas to reward us for our hard work, so we turned tail and headed back stopping to poke the spongey lichen and cool umbrella moss, and stare at the crazy twisted tree.

We stopped at the next rest area on the beach on the way to Bay of Islands. There were a lot of birds picking at the shells that were posing as sand all over the beach. As we walked along we saw a cool little wave generated sand peninsula.




I think Dave took about 150 picutes all around it =). As we were heading back to the van, we realized that the head lamp had been broken.. we all remembered hearing a weird tinkling noise driving along yesterday, and decided that was the glass falling away from the car. Crap. We hope that the rental insurance will cover our replacing it..



Next stop was Paihia (pie-hee-uh) at Te Ti (tay-tee) Bay. It was raining at a little chilly, so after taking the required pics, A and I enjoyed the scenery of Motumaire Islands from the dryness of the van while Dave walked the beach.








Dinner consisted of crappy chinese food (except for Dave's, of course) in Kerikeri (kee-ree-kee-ree) and dirt water. We drove around trying to find a place to buy a new headlamp, but it seems like everything shuts down here before dark. Crazy!


Well, we had no choice but to keep trucking until I couldn't drive anymore (even though it's so much more fun on the left side of the road). A pull-off on Lake Ngato in the pouring rain sufficed nicely after we checked out the end of the road at 90 Mile Beach and saw the signs about cars being sucked out in the tide. Definitely didn't want ANYTHING to do with that.

To see all the pics for Day 2 click here!