Kiwi Paradise : Where Two Oceans Collide

We woke up, grabbed some breakfast and hit the road. The sunset was SO beautiful! Today was a day in the car. We met up with a woman named Natalie who lived in Auckland for our first month of the program and she became friends with Erika and some of the girls in the program. She knew the area that we were heading up to so she tagged along. Today was the drive up to to Cape Reinga- one of the northern most points in NZ. It's where you can see the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean come together. It was a long drive up a beach called 90 mile beach. You have two options either drive on the beach or drive up on a main road. The rental cars place doesn't allow the rental cars to drive on the beach because of the prospect of getting stuck in the sand so we took the road.

One perk of the trip was that we had a Disney sing along in our van. Erika stopped for gas and the guy at the pump came out to help her get started. We were right in the middle of singing "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" when... the van died. The guy at the pump was chuckling at our Disney enthusiasm and then he heard the van die. He was so kind and flagged down another car to come jump us. These guys were huge and practically picked up the van full of us girls to move it away from the gas pump and closer to the other car to jump the van. After the van restarted the pump guy said maybe we had a little too much Lion King haha.

It was a bit cramped in the car since we drove with 11 in a 10 seater van but we made it up to the tip top! There is a lighthouse marking the coastline. The water was a beautiful greenish blue and it was so cool to just look out and see nothing but water water water. It was gorgeous! The coolest part was that the Maori believe that this is a sacred part of the island where the souls of the dead cross over to the next life. We had about a five minute walk out to the lighthouse and throughout the walk there were signs talking about the Maori culture. It was so cool!

On the drive home we stopped by some giant sand dunes where we went sand sledding! Natalie brought some boogie boards for us to slide down the dunes. We hiked up some giant dunes and slide down- super fast, super sandy, and very fun! The hike straight up was killer but the ride made up for it.

Our last adventure of the day was stopping at a gorgeous beach for a nice well deserved dip. The water was absolutely clear- I could walk in up to my chest and still see down to my toes. The water felt great!! The waves were awesome and simply perfect! All of us splashed and swam around just cooling off after a warm, humid day. There were some gorgeous shells along the beach as well. We were just enjoying a beautiful sunset when I noticed a dark shape in the water... it was a stingray!! Just feet from where we were swimming... yes I freaked out and jumped out of the water. Funny enough everyone else followed my lead. Well, it was about time to go anyway.

On the way back to our hostel for the night we stopped by pack and save to pick up some food. It closed at 8pm instead of the usual 10pm and we got there with 20 minutes until close. Unlike the states pack and save has no rules about shoes or well clothes so the majority of us were running around trying to get some essentials for food in just our swimsuits, towels, and bare feet (no worries I had shoes on). Lesson learned- never wear a wet bathing suit when shopping at a grocery store. It was like walking into an open refrigerator- it was absolutely freezing!! We quickly grabbed what we needed and ran to check out only to find out that the van had died again today... so Erika ran to give us money while trying to figure out a way to jump the van yet again. In the end we settled on a bunch of tim tams and milo and then we stopped by the infamous KFC for 24 pieces of chicken, four containers of potatoes, and four containers of cole slaw. We ate so much food while watching the Count of Monte Cristo- I know a great movie to watch in a hostel with a bunch of tim tams. All in all it was an awesome, busy, exhausting day.