Blonde on a Road Trip

After a decent first night’s sleep in the tent, I was feeling daring, knowing that the beach was right behind us. Time for a morning dip, and my first swim in the New Zealand seaside.

The water wasn’t warm per se, but it was very clear, smooth and relatively calm, with no rips to drag me out to sea. Also, it was too shallow for sharks etc, so I didn’t feel too scared to swim. In and out before 9am, and then we treated ourselves to a hot shower to the tune of $2 each before packing up the tent and setting off for Whangarei again.

First stop: coffee and breakfast at an Italian bakery by the roadside. I got a cinnamon donut and cappuccino and Anneke got a toasted sandwich and flat white. We both needed the caffeine to face the day ahead and hit the ground running.

Next stop was Bunnings (homeware store) for a chilly bin (cool box) and citronella candle.

Anneke said she needed a chilly bin for work, so very kindly purchased one for us to use while we roadtripped. It was also massively discounted, so that helped!!!

Armed with equipment to keep beer and milk cool, our road trip was starting to look much more survivable. We could even make coffee for ourselves now!

We then drove on to Whangarei to have a look around, since we’d just driven straight to Tracy’s yesterday and not seen much of it.

Whangarei has many quirky art and craft shops and a lovely harbour with cafes lined up alongside it. We walked in and out of several shops and admired some of the unusual pottery, glassware and crafts.

The main event in Whangarei art-wise is the Hundertwasser Art Centre, which boasts an elaborate amount of mosaic and interesting, quirky designs. Sadly, you have to pay to go in, so we just admired it from the outside, which was easy enough to do. The waterfront is definitely the side to see it from as the other side now backs on to the main road…

Once we’d had our fill of culture, we went to have another top-up of caffeine and sit by the harbour.

We’d massively overstayed our 1-hour parking limit, but parking attendants seem to be few and far between around here, so we got back in the car with a clean windshield.

We headed to Opua, which is where you can get the 5-minute car ferry to Russell. You can also drive all the way to Russell as it’s only on a peninsula, but the car ferry seemed a much more appealing mode of transport and it wasn’t too expensive ($20/£10 one way).

The queue to get down to it was short and sweet, with lovely views of the water we were about to cross.

No sooner had we got out of the car and taken a few pictures and videos before we were almost at Russell and had to get back in the car. It’s a very speedy process and the ferry runs constantly all day, so there’s no dawdling about!

As we drove off the car ferry and onto land, we saw a sign upon entry indicating Okiato – New Zealand’s first capital.

We drove about 5 or 10 minutes to the campsite we’d chosen – Orongo Bay, which had only recently been taken over by new owners. As the new owners explained, they’d only taken over 6 weeks ago and the place had been pretty run down and in a bad state when they got it. Luckily for us, they’d clearly had a busy 6 weeks getting it sorted and it was perfectly adequate for our tent camping!

By about 3:30pm we were assembling our tent, accompanied by some cold Coronas, followed by a snack of crackers and our Dutch cheese shop Gouda and some grapes.

Our feast attracted the attention of the resident ducks, who we couldn’t help but make a fuss of.

One in particular came over with a slightly wonky feather, and he was going quackers for our crackers.

After chilling out for a bit, we decided to try out the campsite pool, which nobody else was using that afternoon. On the way there, we popped by the reception to see about getting a token to do some laundry with, as mine was now piling up a bit. While Anneke talked to the lady owner about possibly doing some gardening in exchange for free board, I admired a sparrow taking a mud bath outside reception.

Once I’d loaded the washing machine, we headed to the pool. It was getting to be a pretty warm afternoon in the high 20s, and the idea of a dip in the pool seemed very appealing!

I swam a few lengths to stretch my limbs and back while Anneke dangled her legs over the side. It was nice to just relax and not do much after a fair amount of gallivanting about and driving. On our way back to pick up some laundry, we were met by the resident chickens, who we of course had to say hello to.

They responded well to “Chook chooks!”, as many chickens do…

The man who runs the campsite told us that kiwi live in the woods surrounding the camp, and he’d even placed us in site 38 because he’d seen kiwi there the night before. Exciting! There’s a “kiwi trail” behind the campsite, but he warned us that we might want to try it in the daytime first as it’s been neglected for the last decade or so and you ideally need to be aware of where you’re going if you want to attempt it in the dark when the kiwi are actually out of their burrows.

So we did exactly that… only to find that he couldn’t have been more right. There’s no way you’d want your first attempt at this trail to be in the dark. There are steel rebars from old eroded stairs sticking out here and there. Nightmare!

But it was stunning and the greenery was something to behold, even if it was much too early in the evening to spot a kiwi.

After our dodgy walk through the New Zealand bush, which is a lot less stressful than a walk in Australia since there’s no risk of a deadly snake or spider jumping out at you, we decided it was time to heat up some dinner.

On the menu tonight – vegetarian fajitas/burritos. I’m not exactly sure what classified as what, but we basically stuff some tortilla wraps with taco beans, sweetcorn, avocado, salsa and cheese and hoped for the best!

After dinner, we sat on Sarah’s comfy chairs again and admired the stars as they started to fill the sky. As much as we’d have liked to go on the kiwi trail again and try to see a kiwi, we were both tired and ready for bed before long, so we took ourselves off to the communal campsite bathroom facilities to brush our teeth and then wriggled into our sleeping bags and called it a night. It’s nice to know we won’t have to take the tent apart in the morning as we’ve booked two nights here. Phew!