Big trees, public loos and kiwi chocolate

13. December (Friday the 13 th!!) 

Today we left Kaitaia and made our way down the west coast of Northland (the northernmost region in NZ).

Points of interest: the teeny weeny village of Kohukohu (I love Maori place-names!!). Our motel had no wifi since wifi is considered a luxury in this country. I was hoping to find a nice café en route with wifi so I could publish a late blog post. We stopped at Kohukohu for yet another toilet stop (more about that later), and strolled around, me looking for wifi. Closest I got was Kohukohu library, proudly stating on a piece of paper on its window that “if you own a laptop” you can come take advantage of Kohukohu library wifi, available Wednesdays 7-10pm! Ok, maybe not. But I'm not complaining really, there is no “real” reason I need wifi, and it's felt even more holidayey when facebook has not been an eternal temptation.

Ok so next promised topic: if there is one thing NZ love, it is their fancy public toilets. Not even kidding. One place we went through recently had maybe my favouritest yet. Tho, hopefully at the end of the trip I will post a collage of all the public loos we came across. (Ok, maybe not, didn't really photograph many). But NZ public loos are CLEAN, cool, quirky, FREE and accessible. Means I don't have to be eternally dehydrated from limiting my liquid intake due to lack of toilets on the way.

Next topic? Sure. So, back to the events of the day. Stopped at a few points, like the adorable Oponomi. Oponomi's main claim to fame is that in the 1950s there was a very friendly dolphin affectionately called Opo, who would come and amuse all the people on the beach by playing with them etc, very sociable. ADORABLE. We had a tall milkshake there as well, with a giraffe on it. Just btw.

Opo and boy

Kiwi chocolate!!

Next stop was a cool sightseeing point with an amazing 360 panorama view of seas basically. Nothing new to NZ, amazing in any case.

Cows and their cowherd

Preparing lunch

Nectarine om nom

Next stop was once again one of the most incredible so far: the Kauri trees of Waipoua forest. (Ok, if I spell place names wrong, please forgive me, I'm getting tired of googling them to make sure they're spelt correctly.) Kauris are massive trees whose roots stretch everywhere and therefore you are forbidden (or well, requested not to is more the word in NZ) leave the indicated path in case you damage the roots.

We went to see the biggest one, Tane Mahuta. Epic and only two minutes walk from the road. There was one place to view it right near it, and one a bit further away. It was really difficult getting any sort of picture capturing the magnitude of the tree, but CC had a brainwave which worked really well – he stood at the further away viewing spot, and I went to the one right near the tree and half-stood on the railing around it. The pic ended up looking awesome, even though I ended up looking a retard to all the people around my viewing point since no one obviously saw who I was actually posing for! (but, this being NZ, at some point one older lady we'd been talking to earlier realised CC was at far away viewpoint, told everyone else who all praised the idea. :)

Tane Mahuta!

And finally, we visited Lake Taharoa Kai Iwi Lakes (wondering if “Kai Iwi” plays any part in the forming of the word “kiwi”?), a popular site for camping. SO CLEAR, so gorgeous. Also saw my first kiwi-sign!!

A scrumptious fishburger in Dargaville and a sleep in the car later, we got back to Wellsford, CC's parents place. I blame Friday the 13^th, but it hadn't been the best day for either of us – I got some sort of sunstroke and CC's phone died at a critical moment etc etc, so we were quite happy to get home. Ah, I love Wellsford.

C'est tout pour l'instant.

Even though German is the tourist language to know in NZ. SO MANY GERMANS.

Emmmmzzyyyy

xxxxx