Leaving Eureka and first days in NZ

Lin here... the Millers left us and we headed to Ferndale, as I wanted Brent to see this pretty Victorian town. We took lots of photos of the pretty buildings and sat outside and had a lovely sandwich. As we sat in the sunshine eating our Xmas sandwich a woman crossing the street nearby spotted a younger man: “Hi grannie” he called. “Hi junior!” she replied in a big, loud voice. We had to laugh and she was quick to respond with a quip about being the loud mouth of Ferndale. Great! We returned home to L Street and around 3.30 old friends from the high school started to arrive: Lucy Q was first and she looked just great and was ready to jazz-a-cize with Shirl after her visit. Andrea was next and it was sad to hear how the languages programme at the school was disappearing. My fingers are crossed that the German programme keeps on going. Next was Diane, also looking great in her retirement. Then came Bob, who introduced me to backpacking when I was here. He too looked great and it was a lot of fun hearing all about his travels in Europe and back to Nepal. We'd love to catch up with him and with Laura too, maybe in Asia. Tim was last to arrive, with great photos of his boys. Altogether a wonderful time. Thank you Steve and Shirl – you supplied the refreshments and made everyone so welcome. You really are stars.

Wednesday 10th December:
Today we headed back to the city. The weather began foggy but as we travelled through the redwood country it quickly cleared and left fabulous, clear sunshine. We stopped several times, took more photos of trees and enjoyed Shirl's picnic. Before entering San Fran. we stopped at Healdsberg, as recommended by the Millers. This was another community of artists, which we really enjoyed. As we hit the Golden Gate bridge the sun was just beginning to set... wow!

Thursday 11th Dec...our last day in California! Sniff, sniff!
Woke up nice and early and phoned Brent's mum on her birthday...happy birthday Doris! Then it was off to the Golden Gate park, where we loved the De Young museum of art. The building itself was superb, but we paid the $10 and really enjoyed the art inside. In fact we could have spent a lot longer there, but wanted to see the academy of science building and the Japanese gardens, both of which were spectacular.... next time we'll pay the $25 to see the academy inside and the roof, which is part of it's green approach. Off to the airport, where we got rid of the car and checked in with no problems. Now here we are waiting to be called through our gate...oh yes, in the check in queue were asked if we were doing a trail we hadn't heard of... something like able bodied! A 20 mile trek, which we must find out about. Then over a coffee we met a lovely lady on her way to her son's wedding in Queenstown. She's a real traveller and gave us some useful hints. Bye for now... wish us luck on this 13hour flight!

new entry....13thDecember
Oh dear...what a flight. We had quite a lot of turbulence and throughout the flight my ( Linda) stomach was equally turbulent, as was Brent's. Suffice it to say that I felt very sorry for the poor bloke next to us, who was off to visit friends in Dunedin. (still he had the window seat). I'd been expecting to sleep for much of this flight, but didn't manage more than a few minutes at a time, so when we landed in Auckland at 5am felt pretty knackered. Couldn't get our heads around the fact that we'd lost a day somewhere..ie: we left san fran on 11th and now it was 13th December. We had a bit of a wait til 7.30am when our lift to the camper van arrived. A very nice chap, who gave us lots of advice about travelling in NZ b4 leaving us in the capable hands of Anne: a French girl who took us thru all the admin of the van... and the New Zealand vin... (spot the play on words). Our van turned out to be a VW high top, which was brand new. Sounds good, but meant we had to run it in, which wasn't so good. We decided to stay close by on the first night and headed for a recommended site about 30 mins from Auckland, called Orewa beach. A lovely site right on the sandy beach. Parked up in a nice space and 5 minutes later a huge motorhome...looking like the bus in Summer Holiday ( the Cliff film if you remember it!)..pulled up real close, followed by a bigger Kea van. All the occupants were very friendly and the Dutch family in the Kea van were really lovely. We ended up spending a very pleasant evening with them, sharing wine, music and tales. They also gave us all their left overs as they were moving on to Fiji the next day. Really kind. We took the beach path to the town centre. It was lovely and there were lots of families playing along the way. The little town had a good supermarket and there was Irish dancing going on in a bar. Quite a lively little place.

Sunday 14th Dec (Lin writing with Brent dictating...a joint effort!)
Moved further North on Route 1...countryside reminiscent of England, with rolling hills and dotted copses of trees with grazing cattle. I drove and the driving was lovely, with little traffic and sunny weather. Took a detour off towards Waipu and came across a beautiful long beach, where we stopped and had a picnic. Used the toilets, which were impressively painted with a mural. Back on the main road with Brent driving I spotted a campsite in the book, which looked promising. It was past Whangarei, where we stopped to look at a sleepy harbour. The site was only 200 metres from the Whangarei Falls and was lovely, with a little comfy sitting room with TV and books on loan. We decided to have a look at the falls, donning our wet gear as the weather looked iffy. The trail began at the top of the waterfall in a little, almost English park, where we met up with 3 young locals. We'd spotted some pretty little birds on the bridge across the lake at the top of the falls. Brent thought they were swifts. As we followed the trail the Englishness disappeared and we found ourselves in the bush, in a rainforest like environment. After reaching the base of the falls we decided to head for the AH Reed Memorial Kauri Park. This was a fantastic walk. It began with a wonderful field of cow parsley, then followed the river as it meandered down the valley. Then we began to see huge tree ferns and here began the “canopy walk.” At this point it was pouring with rain, but this only added to the atmosphere. We reached the canopy walkway, which provided a birdseye view of the forest and brought you up close to the magnificent Kauri trees. We were above the tree ferns and amongst fantastic bird song...a real feature of the forest. It was another awesome experience, very different from the Redwoods, but equally stunning.

Monday 15th:
Today we headed back to the A1 and our first stop proved very interesting. In Kawakawa there is the most fantastic toilet block. It was designed by an Austrian called Hundertwasser, who emigrated to the area when he was about 40. His work was reminiscent of Gaudi, with colourful, large tiles and ceramic columns just like in Parc Guell, Barcelona. The building seemed even more remarkable as it was right in the middle of very ordinary single storey retail buildings. We sat in a cafe opposite and enjoyed watching others spotting the building. We headed to the steam train station, where Hundertwassers boat is on show and were sorry that the train wasn't running as it's one of the last working trains and it goes straight down the high street. On to Opua, where we got the car ferry to speed up our journey to Russell, where we spent the night. Unfortunately the weather was glum, so the pretty little town was less appealing. In the night en route to the bathroom the heavens opened on me...thank god I'd put my waterproof on. Next morning we were up with the lark to a misty start.

Tuesday 16th Dec:
Headed into Russell to post cards and lo and behold the sun came out, so we decided to head off on a walk on the nearby promontory. We passed some quite beautiful houses, with fantastic views across the bay and again birdsong all the way. We headed up the flagstaff commemorating the signing of the treaty of Waitangi. Here there was a wonderful, panoramic view of the bay. Headed back down the path and followed a trail into the bush, where we were amazed to be surrounded by fluttering little birds. A local conservation volunteer told us that they were fantails. We had quite a chat with him and he made some good recommendations. We were in kiwi country, but didn't manage to see any of these elusive creatures. We did see some lovely birds though and really enjoyed the walk.
We then headed back to route 1 in the van heading towards the west coast. The day gave us perfect driving conditions. Very pretty rolling hills at first then as we approached the west coast the wooded mountains rose up in front of us. In skirting around these we climbed over the crest of a hill to witness a stunning view. Below us was a turquoise blue sea backed by the most enormous sand dune on the opposite side of the estuary. Time to stop and soak in the view while we made our lunchtime picnic at a roadside stop.
Onward and upward to a lookout across the bay. We found a small coastal walk that went out across the headland. Huge Pacific waves created a mist along the coast. The weather had changed quickly from sun to ominous clouds.
On our way out of the car park a car cheekly cut us off at the t-junction. Another mile along the road we were flagged down by the occupants of this same car. Three swiss girls in there 20s with the most horrendous flat tyre I had seen – was totally shredded. Looking helplessly at me I had no option but to help them with changing the tyre. Fortuneately this all went smoothly and had them back on the road in no time. Followed them to the nearest garage then hooted them goodbye.
( Lin - “ Brent my hero “ )
Our next stop was in the Waipoua Forest to view some of the most enormous Kauri trees. We stopped on the roadside and made our way down a wooden walkway just above the ground. This is designed to stop the delicate roots being trodden down. In our chatting we almost walked past the first and tallest tree in New Zealand. On realising our mistake we looked to the side and our breath was taken away by the girth and height of this majestic tree. Taking its photo was difficult on our small camera. We walked further to view the widest tree – the one recommended earlier by our conservationist – again awe inspiring.
Travelled onward to find a campsite. We had been told of one down a beach road. The road proved to be one of the roughest we had encountered flicking up red gravel onto the van. At the end of the road was a beautiful beach. We both got out of the van to walk down onto the sand. There were three people on the beach taking turns to ride a quad bike. Looking out to sea I could see the rain approaching. My words to Lin “ We are going to get soaked in a minute looking at that “ Few steps further my words proved true and the rain poured down on us. We hightailed it back to the van laughing at our own stupidity and now soaked also.
Finally found a place to rest our weary heads in Dargaville.