Surfing Hostel, Lighthouse, and WOOFing

The other night, Beth and I stayed at the coolest little hostel in Ahipara (at the south end of 90 Mile Beach). We walked the beach for a few hours on the afternoon we arrived. The locals drive their cars over the sand and rocks on the beach to get to the best surfing spots. We even saw a tractor on the beach! Beth made a new friend, but he was too big to travel with us in our car.The following day, we drove up to the tip of the northern island: Cape Reinga. The lighthouse was nice, and had a mailbox for postcards, but the lighthouse is not as big as the one in Peggy's Cove, NS. Next to the lighthouse was a big sign post with the directions and distances to major cities, and apparently Vancouver is 11,222 km away from that point. We had lunch at a little beach east of the lighthouse where we had to fight the sea gulls from stealing our tuna sandwiches. The sea gulls make the grossest head movements that resemble someone gagging. Ewe. It was a nice addition to our lunch time experience. Shortly after, the tour busses piled in one after the other, so we beat it on out of there in the nick of time.Here are some more photos from the trip to Cape Reinga...

Our next destination was our first WWOOFing experience (Willing Workers On Organic Farms). We drove down to Honeymoon Valley to meet Gerlinda and her two kids (13 and 20 years old). The house is really awesome, and very different to what you would see in Canada. It kind of looks like a house that belongs in Hobbiton where the house emerges from the hillside, and grass grows on the roof. Some of the walls in the house are made out of homemade clay bricks from the soil on the land. The house has such a great feeling...Beth and I are sleeping in a bus, just down the hill from the main house, that was transformed into living quarters. There's really no way to explain what the bus is like, so I'll just put in a photo here... Basically, Beth and I are sleeping with the spiders. It's super. We've put in our working hours for today, so we'll be heading into town on the coast for a 'famous' fish and chip lunch in Manganui (I think that's the town). Gerlinde's daughter, Lena works at this place and said it has the reputation of being the best fish and chip place in NZ. We'll be the judge of that. Apparently, there's another fish and chip place down the road who also claims it is 'the best'. Maybe we'll have to try both. We're hungry enough.

Random stuff we saw on our journey the past few days: 1) wild turkeys, quite surprisingly everywhere 2) microwaves or barbeque's as mailboxes 3) a cow hopping over the electric fence in a rather sly-ish manner (he knew he was being bad) 4) listening to "Eye of the Tiger" on the radio as we drove to the sand dunes That reminds me, I forgot to mention the sand dunes. HOLY MOLY. Huge, hot, sandy, windy, and freaking awesome! Beth and I hiked up the biggest sand mountain we could see so that we could run and frollick all the way down. It was pretty unique and ... sandy. I've ingested enough sand for the time being, I am sure. It must help to cleanse the system. I'll keep believing that until we get out of sand territory.