Hey everyone! I have taken a bit of vacation for myself and I have been staying at a hostel in Kerikeri farther north. I spent Christmas here with a great group of people from all over. We spent Christmas eve at the pub with the rest of the town which was quite fun! It is really cool here because people are truly not concerned at all with theirs or other people's appearance. Normally you would expect people to be at least a bit dressed up on Christmas Eve but there were people in normal street cloths and even some in gumboot and work cloths. Now you are probably thinking that it has something to do with it being a pub but it is like that everywhere! You can walk into the supermarket barefoot and shirtless and people don't really mind at all.
Christmas Day night we went to a beach and lit a bonfire. We had a barbecue with the fish that we just caught. I don't know what they call them here but at home I would call them a rockfish. Later Tony, our host, informed us that "Those are dog food" I think it was because they were so bony, but they tasted great to us!
Yesterday I took a tour from the town of Mangonui north up to the tip of Cape Reinga. It was very, very cool! Unfortunately it was a bit like the Oregon coast when we got to the top, with fog blowing up over the cliffs so we couldn't see a whole lot. I could just barely make out the outlines of the Three Kings Islands. On the way back the tour stopped at the "Ancient Kauri Kingdom" another corny tourist trap but it was pretty cool to be able to walk up a spiral staircase carved into the stump of a 45,000 year old tree! There were chunks of rounds that stood taller than me and they were only pieces!
Today I am just taking the day off maybe going to the Karikari Peninsula but tomorrow we are going to go on a fishing and diving trip in the Bay of Islands! Hopefully the weather gets a bit better tomorrow, today it is really windy and there was apparently an cyclone on the South Island somewhere. The forecast looks good though!
I am heading back south to Whangarei on the 30th (29th your time) to hop onto the boat! I got to go out and spend a few hours on the boat before I left and she is beautiful! I realized as I was climbing on board I realized that I forgot my camera! So I can hopefully get some pictures to you sometime! We are planning on leaving Whangarei on the 2nd of January and I am not sure where we are going from there. The last that I have heard was that we are going to the Hauraki Gulf and Great Barrier Island but that plan may have changed and we may be going North instead now.
Also thank you so much everyone for the Christmas wishes, as always it was great to hear from you and I hope that I remembered to send you something back!
I think that about sums up the last month. I can't believe how bad I've gotten at updating this! I will try and post pictures soon, my camera is in my room which is like a 2 minute walk away so I'll do it some other time :) Hopefully I can give you an update before I leave!
Cheers!
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