Our way to Havelock North

If you could only see me now. It's dark and I'm crouched under a mosquito net with my laptop. I'm sitting on the floor at the edge of our caravan park poaching the neighbors wireless internet. What I'll do for fee internet access.

We're in the wine country of Hawke's Bay. Here's the route we took. You'll need to move the map around so see the points we've been. We didn't go around the cape, but we spent one night part of the way around.


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Rotorua and a little Maori culture

From Tauranga we took a day trip to Rotorua, which is the most visited town on the North Island. The ground throughout Rotorua is dotted with boiling hot springs and bubbling mud. There’s a sulfur smell in the air. Geysers shoot up into the sky and send steam into the air.


Mineral rich water runs down the thin crust above the molten earth.


The Maori people use the steam to cook their food. This is called hangi cooking, or the Maori microwave.


We visited a Maori village called Whakarewarewa (‘wh’ is pronounced ‘f’) and watched their colorful songs and dances. They twirled balls…



and passed batons.


Our favorite was the famous haka


and the fierce expressions


just like their ancestors.


The ornate wood carvings are fascinating.


Both Beck and Quinne made friends with the ancient Maori ancestors.

Going South

We're on our way south. From Colville we spent a night on the east coast of the Coromandel peninsula. Now we're on the bottom flag:


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maps

Here's a map of where we are. Let me know if it doesn't work. If it does, I'll add points where we've been.


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Hello Hello

Just sending this out to encourage more comments. If you're reading this, leave us a comment and let us know you're out there. We really enjoy checking to see who's reading this, even if it's just to say you're there.
Thanks,
Oliver

Colville Farm

We’re camped out in the middle of a pasture on a beautiful farm on the Coromandel peninsula in the town of Colville.


Quinne’s day on the farm starts with taking care of the lambies.


Their mother died, so someone has to feed them from a bottle.


Quinne really enjoys feeding the little lambs.


Then it’s off to fetch the eggs before milking Daisy.


Sometimes Quinne gets to milk Daisy all by herself.


Then Quinne enjoys a glass of warm milk right from the cow.


so does her brother who stays in the back pack (Beck trap) so he doesn’t scare daisy.


Then it’s time to play. And there’s plenty to do on the farm like swimming, or swinging…


or climbing trees…


or just playing…


In the evening, when the sun isn’t so strong, we can go to the beach.


It’s not a bad life staying on a farm.

Bushwalks

The bushwalks here have been a real highlight. Almost everywhere we go, there’s an amazing bushwalk. Here are a few pictures.


Quinne’s been keeping up well. She sees the bush as her fairy garden, and lets her wonderful imagination turn leaves, stones and seeds into fairies, elves, and other woodland creatures.


You can see why this seems like a fairy playground for a kid. Here’s an ancient Kauri tree stump to explore.


Doesn’t this seem like a fairy garden?


Beck walks a little


but usually goes in the backpack.


While the people in this picture have the gear to abseil down the waterfall, Beck would happily follow them without hesitation. We keep a close eye on him around anything steep.

The Van

Here are some pictures of the inside of our caravan.


CF scored us some nice vinyl to replace the carpet, which we can’t wait to put down. Thanks CF! This picture shows the wood sub floor after we pulled the carpet up. Carpet is silly to have in a caravan, especially with kids. It’s a 1994 model and some things are in need of repair. I’ve had to buy a few tools to fix it up a little.
The fridge runs on electricity or gas. The oven and stove are both gas. The water heater can be gas or electric. We just bought a solar panel so we can recharge the battery when we’re “freedom camping,” as it’s called here. Freedom camping is when you’re not on a powered site. The only thing that runs off the battery is the water pump and lights.
The spacious and accommodating bathroom is on the left.


The hand basin folds up so you don’t have to fold yourself up to sit on the toilet. Those are stickers on the floor that have since been removed.


This is the back of the bus, where the kids sleep. Here it’s setup with chairs and table.
The following picture shows the bunks set up. Quinne sleeps on the top bunk and Amy puts Beck to sleep on the bottom bunk.


But Quinne doesn’t always stay in her bunk. Sometimes she distracts Beck. We pull the curtain closed when they’re in bed so we can keep the light on without disturbing them. We’re thinking of replacing the curtain with a steel reinforced door.


The front section turns into a king size bed.
The awning doubles as a laundry room and flower garden.


The kids haven’t killed each other yet.


They like to greet the other campers.

Piha

Piha is a small town 45 minutes from Auckland. We stayed here for a few nights while taking care of a few things in Auckland – doing some repairs on the caravan, getting our power supply for the computer back from the folks we accidentally left it with, et cetera.

Piha is known for its surf. The town is small and sleepy, and no one is in a rush. The beach is of fine black sand, but the swimming is very dangerous because of the rip tides and strong currents. One of our favorite things about the town is that it was not at all commercial. In American, this town would have been loaded with tee shirt shops and Starbucks.

Koanga Gardens and Eco Village

We were members of an awesome organic farm share in Boulder called Abbondanza. It was run by a couple we really liked, Rich and Shanan. Rich has been farming a long time and told us about a place on the North Island that is doing great things with regards to organic farming. He knew the founder, Kay who visited Rich while he was in New Mexico to learn about organic farming and collecting and preserving heirloom seeds. Kay and Bob have since moved on, but we met the rest of the group.

We ran into Emma first. She lives with her partner, David, and two very sweet boys, Maxim and Alexis. They offered to let us stay in their driveway, but their drive was much too steep for the caravan. She introduced me to Scott, their immediate neighbor. Scott is retired and is building a house with his partner Helen. Scott showed me where we could setup our caravan, and briefly showed me around promising to complete the tour in the morning.

Soon after we parked the caravan, Helen and Scott invited us for a swim in the pond just around the corner. It was a beautiful spot for swimming.


Fortunately Amy stopped Beck from throwing our car keys off the deep end of the pier into the mucky depths of the pond just in the nick of time.

After swimming we accepted an offer to have tea with David and Emma. It was interesting to learn about their little community. Emma is from England and married David after moving here. They both commute into work a few days a week, sometimes to Auckland and sometimes to Whangarei, and find it difficult taking care of the property and holding down regular jobs. I can certainly understand why.

The beautiful house that Bob and Kay built along with the important gardens and heritage orchards is for sale. Another plot of land is also for sale. It wasn’t difficult to imagine living here, but we need to explore more before settling down. It was clear that this would be a wonderful place for the kids to grow up in.

The next night we were invited to the weekly community dinner. Amy baked another delicious loaf of bread. Here’s Scott and Quinne on their way to the group dinner.


All the food was delicious, and we met the rest of this interesting little community. We chatted for some time with John who moved here from Scotland with his family.


They’ve been here four years and have worked hard to become as self sufficient as possible. They have successfully avoided the mortgage trap.

We only stayed at Koanga for two nights before heading to Piha the surf town, so it was on the road again.


Luckily we packed very versatile clothes on our trip. In case you’re wondering, Quinne has doubled up her shorts and is wearing them as a quite stylish shrug.

Here's where Koanga Gardens is located:


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A Game of Hot Pursuit

Sometimes there’s a good reason a campground isn’t crowded. Especially during holiday season in New Zealand. The reason there was room for us to back our caravan under a nice big shade tree was not obvious at first. Pretty soon though, we noticed the mosquitoes. We saw them as soon as we arrived, but didn’t expect to be too bothered inside our caravan. We even attempted to eat supper outside. I setup a mosquito net under a tree and setup the table and chairs under it.



When we crawled under the net with our plates, Amy looked up and noticed the swarm of mosquitoes licking their proboscises and said, “great idea Oliver, let’s go inside”. And I thought I had been so clever with the mosquito net. Of course, there were more outside the net, and still more in our van. They found a way into our van and told all their friends. I tied to kill as many as I could before going to bed, but at 2:30, they were buzzing around our heads tormenting us like a - well, swarm of mosquitoes.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to fight back. I didn’t want to wake the kids by clapping my hands, so I decided to use firepower. I was half asleep and pissed off, so it seemed like a good idea to burn the damned things somehow. I lit a candle and held it under the ones on the ceiling so that the flame wasn’t close enough to make a mark on the ceiling, but close enough to encourage them to move on. With Amy laughing nervously in the background (and thinking this might be a sport the yahoos who like to kick up dust in the campground might enjoy also), I followed the bastards one at a time with the flame under them as they flew up against the ceiling. To my utter joy, they would often fly into the wax of the candle and end their miserable existence instantly. Pretty soon I had 13 mosquito carcasses embedded in Amy’s centerpiece organic bee wax candle. I really don’t suggest trying this at home though, especially late at night when you’re confined with your family in a small space made of highly flammable materials.

With only a little candle wax on our duvet, and a few small black smoke stains on the ceiling, I won the battle against the bloody mosquitoes, and we could finally sleep in peace.


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The End of New Zealand

You can’t always stay at the nice places. Some times you have to observe the beer swilling yip yawing yahoos riding their four-wheelers on the sand dunes. You know, the kind of dudes who enjoy kicking up as much dust as they can around the campsite before settling down to 18 or so beers. This is a great place to do that. Not the best place to spend a quiet family vacation though. As you can imagine, there weren’t any dull moments over the New Year.
We have to admit, we had fun driving our car on the beach, and the sand dunes were awesome. We’re staying in a place called Ahipara, which is the beginning of the 90-mile beach. The 90-mile beach is actually 60 miles long. Maybe they left it up to the folks who frequent this place to measure it. It’s a designated road, but you should have a 4-wheel drive. You have to make sure you don’t drive on the beach two hours before or after high tide, or you might lose your car to the Tasman Sea. Apparently that happens quite frequently. This wide beach has long rolling waves that look perfect for surfing. There were a few folks sand sailing. We even saw some guys surfing in the shallow surf while being towed by a car.


Amy wasn’t exactly psyched at first about driving on the beach. Well, at second either. After a few miles though, she started to relax and take in the amazing scenery. It’s a little disconcerting though not seeing anyone else around for miles on this idealic beach. We started wondering if we had read the tide table incorrectly. There aren’t many opportunities to exit either. Toward the north end of the beach, you drive next to the sand dunes, and it seems unlikely that there’s anything inland for a while. To exit, you drive up a river next to the dunes. There are no markings or signs. You just have to know.


We stopped in the middle of the stream and climbed the dunes. We had a blast jumping off the side. A little further up people were surfing the higher dunes. Unfortunately it was the middle of the day, so we didn’t spend that long on the hot dunes.
Once inland, we followed the long unpaved road to Cape Reinga, at the end of the Island. It’s almost the most northern point of the North Island. It ended up being quite a long day, but worth it.


Once our fellow campers have exhausted the rest of the fireworks that they forgot to let off on New Years Eve, we’ll get some sleep. Good night.