Heading Further North June 29th

Caroline, the Irish woman suggested we head north to a town called Ahipara and stay at a hostel called the Endless Summer. Evidently the Tasman Sea and the Pacific meet and the colors and waves are great.

We headed out early and started driving to the ferry across the harbor. No one on the road except a cow weaving down the center. Looked like he'd been on a bender the night before and was thinking " I could swear I left the car somewhere around here."

The ferry is about the size of our living room and could fit six cars - there was only us and one other. The town, Rawena, was nice - curvy streets, trees, old wooden buildings. The harbor was surrounded by mountains and as we went across on our 15 minute ride the sun came out to hit the peaks. The ferry guy, a real nice Maori, said come aboard and off we went.

The road to Ahiparra was again beautiful and twisting. Farmland, mountains and jungle all in a matter of a few miles. Once we got to Ahiparra though the scenery changed completely. Ocean yeah, but an ugly strip of buildings with the Endless Summer boxed in by a couple of them and the ocean view had to share a good look at a grafitti'ed bath house. The hostel was fancy but sterile, the owner a thirty something yuppie, and afraid of our boots - no shoes, boots or sandals are allowed over the threshold. We took a quick look around said we might be back and decided to head back south. We had to go through Kataia to get money - remember it's the only town in the area that has a bank or ATM - and decided maybe Dargaville wasn't such a bad place after all.

It got nice again as we headed down the island. Everything is green and tropical or green and farmland or green and forested. We kept driving hoping to make a town called Thames, it's supposed to have some good hiking and would put us south of Auckland. There had to be a way to miss the Berlin Turnpike this time and we found it.

We got to Thames after 9 hours on the road and had to pick between two hostels. We chose the closest and easiest to find - it was the wrong choice. Nice people running the place and an interesting woman who was near the end of a round the world trip with a boyfriend who was in Japan for a wedding. The rooms were cold, the bathroom was freezing and the windows wouldn't close. Germany was playing Spain for the Euro finals and the TV room was filled with people wearing jackets, hats and gloves.

We decided to spend another day in town and check out the other hostel. It was like going from the Little Rascals' playhouse to Hearst's castle - and all for the same price. More on our day there later.

toots here... here's the filler... hopefully not a repeat... the rains came that day.. it rained on and off.. off and on.... hard , soft... all different ways... as fb said when we got to ahipara we noticed it was all beach... beautiful and 90 miles of it.... bye the bye .. do u all know that gas is over 6bucks a gallon... just a side trip there.... we didnt really want to walk beaches.... we wanted to hike the bush but the lady said.. tooooo mudddy... u cant do that and wear those boots in here.. those boots were made for the porch..not for walkin.... of course we wouldnt track bad stuff in there... common sense methinks... so we pointed our el cheapo mazda rental south and headed for thames... a great town... pronounced teems..... tomorrow will be very exciting... we are staying another night... tomorrow...... craig cassidy and his gang...... stories abound......