Tropical Weather

People talk about Northland being tropical. The only tropical thing about it is the rainfall. Its another wet weekend. Ive come down to Whangarei to catch up with some mates and have a weekend in civilisation. However perhaps Whangarei isn't exactly civilisation - last night I saw a full on gangsta fight between some teenagers.

In other news, the rest of Whangarei is really friendly, I had a full on conversation with a dude last night who'd worked in Japan for the Yakuza. And later on I hung with some random people, & played pool with them.

This morning just had a BK breakfast, met up with Baz and did some shopping.

One weekend in Dargaville

This week wasn't all that eventful - until Friday, when I went down to Dargaville for the Kaipara Car Show. You could camp there all weekend - so I did. I went down after doing my dishes. Admittedly it was a bit further than I expected, and a little hard to find, but after asking at a service station it was sweet.

It was relatively interesting - the focus was mainly burnouts, which admittedly got tedious after seeing it all day. However it was cool to get away for the weekend, and randomly chat to numerous people. There was the odd cool car (and promo girl LOL) to check out.
I noticed that if you entered the show you got your car washed by the bikini girls. I did some research and found out it was free to enter your car. So naturally I did. I know I'd look like a poser, but it was a free carwash! After they did it, I parked my car in the most inconspicuous spot in the field - because if I just took it back to my tent it would be kind of dishonest.

Anyway, it was pretty well set up, bar, natural grandstand on the hill surrounding the burnout pad etc. Real toilets would've been nice though, not the portaloos.

This morning after leaving the venue I went and checked out (a closed) Dargaville, then went through the museum, which I'm glad I did (I almost wrote it off as just another museum about gumdigging), had Subway for lunch, then went to the Kai Iwi lakes, and through the forest, over the habour, and back here.

White Island and environs

Hey again,
My apologies for putting up the photos and then not coming back & writing anything. Its been a bit of a full-on/ laid back week.

1st of all I left Kaitaia on the Friday. I had a toilet stop at Kawakawa, but other than that did it straight. In saying that it still took 5.5hours.

Anyway the next day was Mum's birthday. We had the usual celebratory breakfast, and then casually made our way over to Papamoa. Had a celebratory tea at Mt Maunganui.

The next day Dad & I did a trip to White Island (hence the photos). We had to get up early and go to Whakatane to catch the boat. The trip out was a little uneventful, but at least it was a calm day, and so we didn't feel seasick. It was a bit of a shame that there were no young tourist girls on our boat - it was all middle-aged people.

Anyway, when we got to the island we had to be transferred onto the land by inflatable rafts. They then gave us about a 2 hour tour of the island.

As you can see from the photos there was bubbling mud, a hot pool, and sulphur.

After the tour of the island, we went back to the boat, and had a swim and lunch. Following this they circled the island and headed back to Whakatane. On the way back we saw Dolphins and flying fish - that was awesome. The Flying fish were like model planes and flew about 10 metres.

The rest of my week was spent catching up with friends, doing things that needed doing (such as getting a wheel alignment) and coming back up here. Something cool is that I got a drink-holder for my car - I went to a wreckers, and got the relevant part of the dashboard from a higher-spec model - all for $20. nice.

On the way back here I visited some friends who have got some land above Auckland - awesome.