eNZed - day 4 (18-5-5)

So most people know that leftover pizza is good for breakfast, but do you know what's not good for breakfast? Banana creamed rice. Now you know.

And, since we have breakfast established, we can talk about the rest of the day. We actually woke up to blue sky today!! Breakfast went as above.. then it was on the road for us with the plan of burning through Auckland with a quick stop for a headlamp, then off to the Coromandel Peninsula for a big hike to the Pinnacles.


Today was A's first day driving. I thought she did pretty well excpet for the fact that dave thought she was going WAY too fast which may or may not be a bad thing since Dave also thinks that I drive too fast.

First stop was a the Waiwera (why-weer-uh) River todal flat just north of Orewa (oh-ray-wah). We saw a beached sailboat and a lot of seagulls and little tiny crabs.

Back on the way, we took another stop down the road at the beach at the end of the river.



We drove into town and stopped at a little cafe for a chai but we scored an additional date cake because we were silly. Dave checked out the beach while A and I bought postcards and a few key groceries we were going to need for a 2-3 day excursion to the Pinnacles Hut. I had my first falafel kebab.. yum =). When we met back up, it was off for the headlamp.. luckily A was with us and told those cocky mechanics that she'd just do the installation herself when they tried to say it was, "no five minute job, ya know.." Well, she cut her finger pretty good, but got the lamp in during the allotted time interval - and made sure to tell the workers as she went for a band-aid and the sink. We were very proud of ourselves.

We shot through Auckland with our new shiny headlamp with the intention of hitting DOC (Department of Conservation) Headquarters right before they closed at 4pm. This turned out to be more of a rush than we were expecting, but we made it there in time- just in time for a super heavy rainstorm.
They told us that we should only camp in the next couple of days if we were prepared for flood conditions... well, that didn't actually sound like the most fun we'd ever had so we made reservations at the hut (which can sleep 80) for friday night when the weather is supposed to clear up.


The girl behind the counter (who had really pretty green eyes) recommnded Dickson's Kiwi Park for us to stay at, just north of Thames.

A hot shower and a kitchen sounded awesome. After we got settled in (A called David) we cooked some dinner with some local painters - who seemed to have a liking for A, "You're rockin', actually.."


We watched some lightning going crazy on the other side of the mountains and drank some wine while A took video and then crashed out- dave and I are going to see if we'll get to stay dry in the tent.

To see all the pics from Day 4, click here!