The Bay of Islands and 90 Mile Beach

Ashley arrived safe and sound and after catching up we mad plans to get out of Auckland the nest day! We woke up bright and early and headed down to another hostel to meet a guy named Tom who found us a rental car. We were looking for a camper-van, and instead for the cheapest price of $60/day we got a micro-camper. It is a stationwagon which converts the back into a sleeping area, that works for us, but anyone over 5'6'' I wouldn't recomend it!

I began the drive (which is on the opposite side of the road) a bit nervously, but so excited to begin our road trip. Our first destination was the Bay of Islands and a town called Paihia (no clue how to pernounce that)! Unfortunately, it was raining when we got there, but that didn't stop us from touring the town. We stumbled in out of the rain to a hostel and read some of the guest books there where travellers had left info on places they'd been. We then headed to the beach and took a siesta in the back, which didn't end untill well past 8:00pm. At this point we were unsure of where to stay so Ashley boldly went up to a house that had a camper-van, that was brightly decorated, in the front yard. She ran back to the car saying that the home-owner Dean said we could park in his yard and to come in and join him and his friends for a drink. His friends were Simon and Will from Sydney and Fraser from Auckland and he had only met them today. He works with Frasers Dad, and was letting them stay at his place for the night. After a few drinks we headed out to the bar, where Ashley and I downed a piece of pizza, since niether of us had eaten anything besides fruit since breakfast. We had a great night, which led us to another bar later to play some pool (however I was the only one who ended up playing with some guys from Irealand, needless to say I lost pretty badly), and ended with a nice swim to top off the night. We ended up crashing in Dean's guest room, which he graciously offered us, and got a few hours of sleep before we were awaken with talk of a juice stand right across the street, which got us out of bed.

After exchanging e-mail addresses, Ashley and I said our thanks to Dean, and head up towards 90mile beach. We drove right up onto the beach and raced along doing over 120 clicks untill we reached the end. The waves were crashing in and the ocean stretched out forever, with nothing but more water on the horizon. The view on our other side was massive sand dunes, that looked just like I imagine they look in the desert. We were a little unsure of how to get back to the main road without driving all the way back down the beach and after talking to a few guys we headed for this turn off, which unfortunately got us stuck in the sand! I began digging and Ashley went ou to flag down some help. She came back in a truck and with a few pulls we were out of the sand! The guy in the truck told us to follow him back up the beach to a river that we could drive up and would lead us back to the main road. Driving up the river was halarious, we closed our windows pretty quickly as the water was flying up beside us.

Eventually we made it to Cape Regina at the top of the North Island. Here the Tasman sea and Pacific Ocean meet, and it made for a breathtaking view! Then we got back in our car and attempted to reach a town called Oponoto, however, due to poor navigating by me (that led us to the end of the road with a no exit sign on our right and left) and lack of gas, we stoped in a town called Rawene. We arrived there at 7:30 and everything was closed! We managed to find a campsite though and enjoyed a miraculous sun set, that made the stop so woth it! We had to laugh as we looked at the sight seeing map for the town, which included the grocery store, gas station, and practically every building on the main street, which took as 5 minutes to see. The next morning we got some good tips from the campers around us and made our way down the Kauri Coast.