We all woke up to a beautiful view of the harbor right out the batch house window... We all ate breakfast, packed food for the day, and drove an hour to Cape Regina... Basiclly everyday I had no idea what I was doing... First stop was the light house... The views of the beaches in the back were incredible... There is a great action shot of Olly jumping into one of my photos with the view of the beach and sand dunes in the back... The sand dunes are gnarly... They kind of appear out of nowhere... You're just driving along and everything is green then all the sudden there are these massive sand dunes... Cape Regina is the northern most point of the North Island. It is where 2 seas meet; the Pacific Ocean (male) and Tasman Sea (female). You can actually see where they meet and I got a great photo of it (above). Both are different colours and the waves bash into one another... Such a beautiful sight. You're not allowed to eat or drink any colored liquids while on the ground. This is because Cape Regina is a spiritual ground for the maori. They believe that when you die a Maori spirit will travel to Cape Regina and jump into the rocks and swim to Three Kings Island which can be seen clearly on a good day in the distance. From here, the Maori spirit will look back on to New Zealand and reflect on their lives, by literally "looking back". I love learning about other cultures and spiritual beliefs! At the lighthouse I got a great photo of how far away Japan and LA are from Cape Regina... The light house and trail was truly incredible...
Next up was lunch at Taputaputa Bay... We normally made sandwiches with hummus, lettuce, beets, tomato, avocado, carrots, sprouts, cucumber, and olly and his family always put this nasty smelling yeast-gluten spread on there bread... I couldn't handle the smell so I passed on putting it on mine... We also always had lots of fresh fruit and juice... Plus amazing nut bars on hand.... After lunch and exploring the beach a bit, we drove to the massive sand dunes to do some body boarding down the dunes.... what a great experiences.... You never would guess that you can get more crazy speed on these suckers... I loved the dunes! Here is a great video clip of me going down my first dune... pretty slow... but I did go faster and faster on the next few. Then one of Olly going down the largest sand dune, eating it at the end and getting sand all over him LOL. I got some great photos of the dunes... Everyday I was in NZ it was sunny and beautiful.
Next we went to a beach that was all made of shells... We explored the beach for a bit and got some great photos of the beach and shells on my hand. After our awesome day of course we had to end it with some surfing and body boarding... We got the beach jeep started and Olly, Dave and I headed the beach... Oh did I mention I was driving... OH yes... Everything is backwards and it was a manual... I was surprised we didn't crash until I got us stuck in the sand... I didn't realize we were going to be driving in the sand... Nor on the actual beach... Not something you can do in the states... I was laughing so hard when I staled in the sand that I was almost crying.
Olly and I switched spots and he 4-Wheeled it out of the sand for me.... Just happy we didn't have to walk home... We made it to the beach that was deserted... Absolutely nobody was in sight... just us... We put our wetsuits on... Olly lent me his spare wetsuit... Then we rode some waves for about an hour while Dave gathered mussels.... cause it was low tide....
We then headed back... took showers and Rose had made dinner... Beans for me since I don't eat a lot of meat... veggies, potatoes-yams and bread... dessert was fruit... I was so tried that I went to my room, read for a bit and dreamt of the beautiful NZ beach. What a great day and a incredibly memorable one with Olly and his family.
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