Rain,rain,GO AWAY! January 23, 2008

Northland, NZ

Originally uploaded by chris.warn

Hello all, after having emails from a couple of you it sounds like everyone is ill and missing the fun of Christmas. Hope the New Year gets better for you lot. Maybe you will feel better to know that we are also getting lots of rain! We have stumbled, inadvertantly upon a cyclon. Its called “Funa”ironically. Not massively scarey,no worse than a bad day in England but it appears to be following us around the island like a mean ,wet, windy stalker. We had great plans to go Kayaking, as it was free at our backpackers, but ended up snuggled up all day watching movies. This is fine when you are in your own house but when you are sat next to grubby teenage travellers who keep talking,its just not right! Luckily we were stocked up on food and wine. We are now cooking all our meals to save cash ,both of us are happy about this as we like cooking and have missed it. We are working a 2 day rota system (this is what happens when you have too much time on your hands)and taking in turns with cooking, shopping for meals and dishes. Loving it! Chris made sausages and mash, then steak with homemade ratatouille (very nice Mr Warn) and i felt prepared for equally fabulous meals with chicken saute with potatoes. Unfortunately cooking conditions took a turn for the worse on my shift and i had to cut and prep with the Leatherman and serve food in our plastic bowl(like dog food.) However the cooking in unusual situations is great and we are back on suitable low budget wine .Great fun, 2 bottles seems to help aid tent sleeping and less than one bottle, well you might as well sit in the car all night and not even bother to try sleeping!
We have been getting stuck in to some driving around the north island to keep ourselves busy in the bad weather. New Zealand is so beautiful,it really is the cleanest,healthiest looking place i have ever been. We headed North first to Cape Reinga, top North of the island,where the pacific meets the Tasman Sea. Ridiculously windy, so much so it took a while to open the car doors. Worth the battle as we walked to the farthest north point of New Zealand and saw for miles up the coasts. There was a very dinky white lighthouse,as perfect as a pepper pot sat right on the far point .The rain held off and the sun popped out briefly for some pics. Chris really wanted to come here as his uncle Rich(or uncle RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCHHHH as most of the boys from the stag night know him) had a photo taken there under a sign post when he was a lad and Chris wanted to do the same! The sign pointing to London said we were 18029 km away, clearly a very long way to walk! We staggered back to the car holding onto each other and sat exhausted and bedraggled before heading to camp. Pretty average camp site, Ahipara, with both Mr and Mrs Warn back in the manic flapping tent after the 2nd bottle of white and slept like dreams.
Off to Taipano next.Still crazy weather and our trip on the Kohukohu ferry was a little bleak. We passed the oldest wooden house in New Zealand,”who cares “i hear you cry. Not us ,so just a quick glance around and a firm refusal to pay entrance fee had us back in the car. We drove on to the Waipoua Forest ,where it appeared everyone else had gone as well. Lots of bad clothes so we felt no shame in putting on our macs( one pound from Tesco Metro with free Emergency Blanket)Cutting a dash ,we headed for the biggest Kauri Tree in the world. Yes you heard me “the world”. We were looking out for it and pondering over which one it was, then headed around the corner to see this unbelievably huge tree.We said what i imagine hundreds of other people said before us”That tree is massive”. It seems normal size in the photo but it is really impressive in real life,5 metres wide, 50m tall and 2000 years old. Very wise old tree indeed. We took this stunning photo of us in our macs,it wasn’t raining at this point, but we just felt so special in them it seemed a shame to take them off.
As you can tell we have limited activites available to us so lots of sight seeing from the car has been the only option.The country side is amazing here, when we left the forest you could see trees and shrubs overspilling into the road as New Zealand is so fertile. The plant life is every shade of green you can imagine,piled up,jammed in and green and glossy around you.
Everything wasn’t as pretty back in our campsite that evening however. Just a car park type set up by the river outlet. It was quite strange as there was nothing there and no lighting so when it got dark at 9.30 we just had to go to bed. Very strange being tucked up in sleeping bags so early with no noise whatsoever outside.
We both woke this moring in quite foul moods. Bad weather again meant it was raining so we had to get out of wet tent, into a wet field,water falling down our backs in the process. The showers were on a money timer that was really eating up cash. It was in a shed with dead goggled eyed cockroaches staring through the transparent perspex at me. When i had run out of cash and was left soapy i nearly punched in the wall in a Incredible Hulk style and ran out throwing cars around. As it was i dried myself sadly and went and sat next to my damp sad husband in the car. After a small moan to each other we headed south passing Auckland to get to our Big Gig on 27th in the South Island. Our moods were lifted thanks to our MP3 and we sang loudly and out of tune to Oasis,Was not was, Paulo Ntini, ACDC, Dido, the Proclaimers and several bad rap tunes. The time was well spent as we asked ourselves the question,would it have been better to see Elvis in concert when he was young and handsome gyrating around? Or when he was older, fat and sweaty in that white catsuit and he had a few more tunes under his heavily strained belt? Thankfully we have arrived at our camp in Raglan for the night and can rest with a chicken curry ala Chris.
New Zealand is brilliant but we really want the rain to go away now.