northland with silke

so yesterday i picked up silke from rotorua, so were traveling together again - just for a few days, though... drove all the way up here, passed auckland (which i got my first glimpse of) and spent the night in another randomly chosen bbh hostel... only to start again this morning... having a stop in kawakawa, where there were public toilets constructed by hundertwasser (he lived in nz for 25 years!)... and gave this guy from israel a lift... now were here in paihia (bay of islands) and tomorrow were going for a day trip up to cape reinga, ninety mile beach and other places... so really just a full programme... =)

the trip to cape reinga and ninety mile beach was wicked... though the weather was a bit shitty the whole trip was still enjoyable... we started off driving up on the ninety-mile beach, which was gorgeous! it stretches all the way up to the horizon and the weather was pretty dramatic as well, so the atmosphere was amazing... =) really windy, though! after a short stop at ninety-mile beach we went on to duneboarding - wicked! but bloody scary! it sounds like pure fun, but first of all because your head is so bloody near to the ground when you lie on that board your whole face, mouth ears and more are full of nasty sand, and secondly, the dune we rode down was so freekin steep that it was actually pretty scary going down there! you have to dig in your feet to make yourself go slower, so what i did was stuck my feet into the ground (sand) as hard as possible (and it was still going too fast!) which then made my feet all sore because of the sand... nice! i can do skydiving, bungy and the canyon swing too, but duneboarding is too scary!!! =) anyways, after that we continued and finally got to cape reinga, which technically isnt even the most northern point of nz... had lunch after that... and eventually got back to paihia, with a stop at the (apparently) best fish'chips shop ever... was gooooood! in the evening i went out with silke and another girl from our dorm to go to a swiss restaurant and i had schnitzel - REAL schnitzel - nice. later on we went out big time and had a few drinks... so just a really fun, but looooong day. =)