February Week 6 2015

Well, this is officially a week late. To quote Rick Perry, “Oops.” I’ve decided that the best way to deal with the situation is to write one post as if it was a week ago and then write this week’s post tomorrow. Cool? Cool. This week was a big week! Michael and I arrived in Auckland where my cousin, Nathan, picked us up from the airport in our soon-to-be car! Because we’re wizards, we were able to fit our four gigantic bags, two backpacks, camera bag, small suitcase, and the three of us in the car (it’s a ’99 Mazda Familia so be impressed). After spending that day and night in the city, the three of us drove about four hours north to Matauri Bay on Thursday. When we arrived at the campground, I was immediately blown away by the beauty of this place. (I will be posting many, many pictures of it on Facebook). The campground was sandwiched between two beaches, one sandy (as pictured above) and one rocky. The water was fairly warm and crystal clear. We spent four days and three nights there where we swam, hiked, drank beer, and played mafia. Some of the people (there were about a dozen in our group) there chartered a fishing boat on Friday so we also had all the fish (mostly snapper) we could eat for the remaining days. Michael and I took a solo (duo?) day trip where we drove (yes, that was an adventure in itself) to a town called Paihia and took a ferry to Russel, a small historic town in the Bay of Islands. We camped in Matauri Bay until Sunday so I guess this is where this post ends…