Tree hugging
28/1/2007 - 4/2/2007
cigarettes smoked: 4 (oops - had a couple - or four to be precise - of weak moments earlier on in the week), new sandfly bites: 9, sandflies killed: 2 (they're getting sneakier, the little bastards), surfing related bruises: 2, number of times sandboarded down dunes at high speed and splashed into the sea at the bottom: 9.
I made it most of the way through Northland to Ahipara -a stunning little spot at the end of ninety mile beach with a beautiful hostel filled with hammocks, surfboards for hire, free sandboards and boogie boards and lovely, pretty, clean, spacious rooms. After dumping my stuff I got a lift into the village with a couple staying at the hostel and bought just about everything I could find that was suitable for vegetarians (there wasn't an awful lot of choice). As it turned out, none of it tasted good, so after I'd given up on the revolting pasta sauce and the mouldy garlic bread, I switched to wine and chocolate (left over from the previous day) for my evening meal. Much better, and highly nutritious too. I then spent a drunken evening teaching a crowd of Canadians and Europeans from various countries to play "in the pot" and stayed up giggling until the early hours.
The next day I headed up to Cape Reinga - a beautiful area which is almost the northern tip of New Zealand (most people think it is, but the most northerly spot is actually the aptly named Northern Cape), where the Tasman sea meets the Pacific ocean, and where Maori lore states the entrance to the underworld is (the soul of the departed apparently slides down the roots of a pohutukawa tree there and rejoins their ancestral spirits). The carpark, the viewing spot on the nearby hill and the lighthouse area were rammed with tourists taking photos and reading the information boards, but 100m away from the carpark at the start of one of the walking trails, you couldn't see another soul. I had decided that, given it's mythological proximity to the underworld, here was as good a place as any to come and talk to Steve, and since I didn't want a bunch of tourists looking at me like I was nuts, listening, interrupting, or taking photos of me, I decided to go for a walk. After a km or two I found a quiet spot where the only sounds I could hear were the waves crashing onto the rocks below, where I could see the stunning coastline for miles and where the air was redolent with the scent of Manuka, and I sat and talked to Steve, describing the scenery and what I'd been up to in the last few weeks (I've no idea if he can hear me or not, but it gives me some comfort to do this, and it's worth a try in case he can hear me, as I'm fairly certain he won't have access to my blog). When I'd finished I sat and imagined what he would say by way of a reply - my guess is "You fucking tree hugging hippy!" said through gritted teeth in his mock-exasperated voice, followed by him passing me the spliff if there was one to hand. I walked on for a while longer, enjoying the solitude and thinking of Steve, imagining him walking beside me, and then I headed back.
I got up the next morning to be told that once again there was no space in the hostel (why didn't I ask last night?), so I arranged a lift down south for that afternoon and spent the morning "surfing". I attempted to ride a couple of waves, but they weren't very powerful and I kept falling off, then the waves just disappeared altogether, so I sat on my board, behind where the breakers should have been, waiting in vain for a wave and singing KT Tunstall's "Silent Sea".
That afternoon I made my way to the Waipoua kauri forest with Ramona and Brian - a lovely pair that I'd met at the hostel. They introduced me to some Kiwi music (the Black Seeds and Salmonella Dub - dub is apparently very popular in these parts) and we jabbered non-stop all the way to the camping grounds. When I arrived I went to my cabin (all to myself - wooohoooooooooooooo!), dumped my stuff and got chatting to the family next door. They very kindly invited me to join them on a kiwi-spotting walk that they were planning after dark. I decided, since it was highly unlikely that we'd come across any kiwis, much less that it would stay still long enough to get a decent photo at night with no flash, not to bring my camera. The family had been the previous night, but hadn't spotted any kiwis, and wanted to try again, this time staying further away from a guy who does nightly guided kiwi-spotting tours, and makes far too much noise. Sadly, the tour leader left later than usual and we encountered him again, so we hung back whenever we got too close to the group, or whenever we heard kiwis snuffling through the undergrowth, or saw glow-worms doing their thing, lighting up the forest like Christmas trees. At one point we'd almost caught up with the tour leader, and he rather rudely shushed us - the only person who was making any noise was Rachel with her wheelchair, which is rather unavoidable, and he was making 3 times as much noise shushing us, so when he started leading his tour group away, just as we spotted the kiwi they'd been looking for, none of us felt the need to call them back. It was just standing there, about a metre away from us, looking, frankly, startled. I think it had seen us the second I saw it. It darted off, parallel to the path, and we followed it slowly, trying to keep our distance a bit, then it darted across the path right in front of us, and carried on foraging on the other side. It was the most amazing feeling, standing there with our red cellophane covered torches (kiwis can't see the red end of the spectrum, and white light is bad for their eyes as they're nocturnal), watching this rotund ball of fluff rummaging around for grubs and worms with it's huge beak. The kiwi stayed within a few metres of us for about half an hour, seemingly becoming quite used to us. Lesson learned - always bring my camera (damndamndamndamndamndamndamn). Kiwis are such wierd creatures - they're the most un-bird-like-birds you could imagine - they can't fly, they're nocturnal, they're the only birds with their nostrils at the end of their beak and have a fantastic sense of smell as a result, but not that great eyesight, their body temperature is 38 degrees (lower than most other birds), they have two working ovaries (most birds have one), feathers that are more like hair, and they find their food by snuffling about in the undergrowth - occupying the niche that is normally taken up by rodents in other countries (there were no mammals in New Zealand until man came along, so the kiwi evolved to make use of this food source going spare, until the rodents turned up in droves, taking their food and eating their eggs and young). This experience was far more exciting than seeing the sperm whale, despite the cool pictures. Maybe it was the smaller group size, or the decidedly more low key, low-tech approach to locating endangered species. Either way, it just felt like a much more personal experience.
After the kiwi moved on to a different spot, we went back to our cabins, celebrated with a glass of wine, and went to bed. I stayed up until 1am finishing off "The Bone People" - an extremely heavy and difficult read, written by a New Zealander who won the Booker prize for it in the 80s. At 3am I woke needing the loo, and after my traditional 10 minutes of lying there, kidding myself that I can maybe go back to sleep without having to get up, I dragged myself out of the cabin, glanced up and woke up properly - the display the galaxy put on that evening was so amazing. It wasn't just that I could see the milky way, it was the detail of it that was astonishing. I've never seen the stars in the night sky so vividly - it's not surprising really, there are no lights on in the Kauri park, or for miles around at night and there's very little pollution. What a wonderful night.
The next morning I wandered round the various walks in the Kauri park, going up to a viewing spot and seeing these enormous kauri trees that dwarfed the people standing next to them. The first one I went to see was the largest Kauri tree in NZ - Tane Mahuta - the God of the forest. I was just wandering along, asking the people I was walking with how to recognise a Kauri tree, the guy just laughed and said "You'll know when you see this one". He was quite right, a few seconds later we walked out into a clearing and the first words out of my mouth were "Bugger me" when I spotted the enormous tree in front of me. I was informed by a sign that the tree was 2000 years old, 51.5m tall and has a girth of 12.8m (I winced and regretted my first words). It was only when we went to see the 7th largest Kauri tree - Yakas - that I had a proper understanding of just how awesome these trees are. Yakas is the only one you're allowed to stand next to or touch (giving you a proper sense of perspective), the others you can't get within 5m of. I tried to hug Yakas - I couldn't quite get my arms around it. Kauri trees are not just awe inspiring, beautiful trees, they're also an important species environmentally, as Kauri forests are one of the most diverse types found in NZ. Add to this the fact that they're incredibly useful scientifically - you can cut a core from the trunk right to the centre without the tree sustaining any lasting damage, and the tree rings on that core provides all sorts of useful information about environmental conditions in the last 2000 years - particularly useful when studying phenomena such as El Nino or global warming. After about 4 hours walking I went for a swim in a lovely little swimming hole, then went back to the visitors centre feeling refreshed to collect my stuff.
That afternoon I made my way up to Omapere (annoyingly I had to go an hour out of my way to get to the nearest town with a cash machine as I hadn't seen one for days in Northland), located the charming Globe Trekkers hostel run by the extremely helpful Mike, who offered to run me down to the supermarket as it seemed to be quiet on the front desk. I spent the evening chatting with a Canadian couple - Kamil and his girlfriend (whose name eludes me), and my dorm mate Nicole, cooking food, and drinking pinot noir and later on hot chocolate.
The next day I took the boat across the harbour to a peninsula covered in enormous sand dunes that look completely incongruous next to the verdant hills opposite. Honestly, looking across the harbour on a sunny day, you feel like you're in Africa somewhere. The boat dropped me off at the bottom of the dunes with a sandboard, I laboured my way to the top of the nearest dune (only about 30m, but you take a stride of 40cm, then sink 20cm back down - it's bloody hard work), then took a running start, threw myself onto my front on the sandboard, and went flying down the sand dune. You go so fast (up to 20km/hr) that when you reach the bottom of the dune and hit the water, you go skimming across the surface for a few metres before you slow down and sink. I went up again and again (it was sooooooo much fun), and when I tired of climbing the dune, I swam in the water with a lovely Maori girl who'd just turned 11 that day. We did handstands in the water and I tried to teach her to do somersaults. At one point, standing on the top of the sand dune, I saw a stingray swimming through the water past a couple of other sandboarders (and christ did the birthday girl shriek! Unnecessarily I might add, they only sting humans when they're threatened, and then it just hurts like buggery, unless you're unlucky enough for the stinger to pierce a vital organ).
Lovely Mike joined us drinking that evening. He managed to get almost the entire hostel involved in a darts game called killer (you have to pick a number by throwing a dart left handed, when you've actually managed to hit the board, you then have to hit your number again - right handed this time - to activate it and become a killer, and from that point on you try to hit other people's numbers to take away one of their 3 lives, and eventually knock them out). Somehow my name appeared on the board, despite my protests, and inevitably I was shockingly bad at it. So bad in fact, that in the first game, the only person I managed to kill was myself. Twice. During the second game no-one really bothered trying to eliminate me (understandably), although I would have appreciated being put out of my misery as I tried again and again to hit my number and become a killer, while everyone around me massacred each other. Eventually I finally managed to activate my number and achieve killer status, only to find that I was one of three people left in the game, and the only one with all three lives intact. Mike knocked out a charming old duffer called John and started trying to kill me, but then something wholly unexpected happened. I actually hit the number I was aiming for on the dartboard and took away Mike's last life before he could kill me off. I started dancing around purporting to be a cold-blooded killer and telling everyone that I'd intended to be that bad, and was in fact a hustler. I don't think I convinced anyone. I taught the few people who were still up how to play "in the pot" and then stayed up chatting to Nicole and Mike until the fairly late hours of the morning.
The next morning after a slow start, I packed my stuff and spent most of the day heading off to the bay of islands on the East coast. I didn't realise just how far away from the ferry port the backpackers was and was in agony by the time I'd carried my numerous bags for about 20mins, only to be told by the owners that I should have phoned for a lift. Hmmmph.
In the morning I did my washing, including my bikini, but as the sun was shining beautifully (the weather in Northland is stunning compared to the rest of NZ, known in Maori as Aotearoa - the land of the long white cloud), I located the nearest nudey beach and went au naturel. After a relaxing morning I went back across the bay to Paihia to the treaty house - where the peace treaty between the English and the Maoris was signed on 6th February (Waitangi day) 1840. In the run up to Waitangi day there've been a series of concerts outside the treaty house, so I went along, discovered that I'd just missed one of the bands I wanted to see, and the other had cancelled, so I sat there in a bit of a huff. There was a toddler about 1 year old sitting near me. I pulled all sorts of ugly faces at her - she was amazingly fast on the uptake - quite an immitator - she kept trying to pull the same faces back, then would do a wicked little giggle that involved wrinking up her nose and dimples appearing in her hugely chubby cheeks. By the time I left I was in a far better mood, and she'd learnt several new facial expressions, including sticking your tongue out at someone else (an important skill in life), which she really had down to pat.
I went back to the hostel and slobbed in front of Finding Nemo with some very unimaginative pasta.
Yesterday morning I went for another sun worshipping session, then headed off to Kerikeri, where the Black Seeds (a dub band that I've heard a fair bit of since being here) were playing that evening. I found a hostel, chatted to my dorm mates, went food shopping, then got ready. I got tarted up in my new skirt, and actually managed to leave the hostel this time. The gig was fantastic. It was held in a really small venue (there can't have been more than 100 people there) that felt really intimate. The band were amazing - nobody seemed able to stand still, and watching everyone throwing some very outlandish shapes on the dancefloor was a real treat. I danced with a lively Maori girl called Maria, who danced with roughly the same balance of not much grace, but an abundance of energy and enthusiasm, as me (if I don't almost fall over several times during a song, I don't feel that I've really gone for it properly). Later on I ran into Ramona - the girl who'd given me a lift to the Kaori forest, who'd introduced me to the Black Seeds' music in the first place. We had a good dance, and then I hung around after the gig for long enough to tell a couple of band members how much I'd enjoyed it.
Today, when I can be bothered, I'll head south to Whangerei where I will hopefully scuba dive the world class Poor Knights islands, and then I'll head back south to Raglan, where the weather is sadly less glorious, but where I will hopefully be able to retrieve my washing and surf a bit more.
Photos will appear soon, honestly. Watch this space...
cigarettes smoked: 4 (oops - had a couple - or four to be precise - of weak moments earlier on in the week), new sandfly bites: 9, sandflies killed: 2 (they're getting sneakier, the little bastards), surfing related bruises: 2, number of times sandboarded down dunes at high speed and splashed into the sea at the bottom: 9.
I made it most of the way through Northland to Ahipara -a stunning little spot at the end of ninety mile beach with a beautiful hostel filled with hammocks, surfboards for hire, free sandboards and boogie boards and lovely, pretty, clean, spacious rooms. After dumping my stuff I got a lift into the village with a couple staying at the hostel and bought just about everything I could find that was suitable for vegetarians (there wasn't an awful lot of choice). As it turned out, none of it tasted good, so after I'd given up on the revolting pasta sauce and the mouldy garlic bread, I switched to wine and chocolate (left over from the previous day) for my evening meal. Much better, and highly nutritious too. I then spent a drunken evening teaching a crowd of Canadians and Europeans from various countries to play "in the pot" and stayed up giggling until the early hours.
The next day I headed up to Cape Reinga - a beautiful area which is almost the northern tip of New Zealand (most people think it is, but the most northerly spot is actually the aptly named Northern Cape), where the Tasman sea meets the Pacific ocean, and where Maori lore states the entrance to the underworld is (the soul of the departed apparently slides down the roots of a pohutukawa tree there and rejoins their ancestral spirits). The carpark, the viewing spot on the nearby hill and the lighthouse area were rammed with tourists taking photos and reading the information boards, but 100m away from the carpark at the start of one of the walking trails, you couldn't see another soul. I had decided that, given it's mythological proximity to the underworld, here was as good a place as any to come and talk to Steve, and since I didn't want a bunch of tourists looking at me like I was nuts, listening, interrupting, or taking photos of me, I decided to go for a walk. After a km or two I found a quiet spot where the only sounds I could hear were the waves crashing onto the rocks below, where I could see the stunning coastline for miles and where the air was redolent with the scent of Manuka, and I sat and talked to Steve, describing the scenery and what I'd been up to in the last few weeks (I've no idea if he can hear me or not, but it gives me some comfort to do this, and it's worth a try in case he can hear me, as I'm fairly certain he won't have access to my blog). When I'd finished I sat and imagined what he would say by way of a reply - my guess is "You fucking tree hugging hippy!" said through gritted teeth in his mock-exasperated voice, followed by him passing me the spliff if there was one to hand. I walked on for a while longer, enjoying the solitude and thinking of Steve, imagining him walking beside me, and then I headed back.
I got up the next morning to be told that once again there was no space in the hostel (why didn't I ask last night?), so I arranged a lift down south for that afternoon and spent the morning "surfing". I attempted to ride a couple of waves, but they weren't very powerful and I kept falling off, then the waves just disappeared altogether, so I sat on my board, behind where the breakers should have been, waiting in vain for a wave and singing KT Tunstall's "Silent Sea".
That afternoon I made my way to the Waipoua kauri forest with Ramona and Brian - a lovely pair that I'd met at the hostel. They introduced me to some Kiwi music (the Black Seeds and Salmonella Dub - dub is apparently very popular in these parts) and we jabbered non-stop all the way to the camping grounds. When I arrived I went to my cabin (all to myself - wooohoooooooooooooo!), dumped my stuff and got chatting to the family next door. They very kindly invited me to join them on a kiwi-spotting walk that they were planning after dark. I decided, since it was highly unlikely that we'd come across any kiwis, much less that it would stay still long enough to get a decent photo at night with no flash, not to bring my camera. The family had been the previous night, but hadn't spotted any kiwis, and wanted to try again, this time staying further away from a guy who does nightly guided kiwi-spotting tours, and makes far too much noise. Sadly, the tour leader left later than usual and we encountered him again, so we hung back whenever we got too close to the group, or whenever we heard kiwis snuffling through the undergrowth, or saw glow-worms doing their thing, lighting up the forest like Christmas trees. At one point we'd almost caught up with the tour leader, and he rather rudely shushed us - the only person who was making any noise was Rachel with her wheelchair, which is rather unavoidable, and he was making 3 times as much noise shushing us, so when he started leading his tour group away, just as we spotted the kiwi they'd been looking for, none of us felt the need to call them back. It was just standing there, about a metre away from us, looking, frankly, startled. I think it had seen us the second I saw it. It darted off, parallel to the path, and we followed it slowly, trying to keep our distance a bit, then it darted across the path right in front of us, and carried on foraging on the other side. It was the most amazing feeling, standing there with our red cellophane covered torches (kiwis can't see the red end of the spectrum, and white light is bad for their eyes as they're nocturnal), watching this rotund ball of fluff rummaging around for grubs and worms with it's huge beak. The kiwi stayed within a few metres of us for about half an hour, seemingly becoming quite used to us. Lesson learned - always bring my camera (damndamndamndamndamndamndamn). Kiwis are such wierd creatures - they're the most un-bird-like-birds you could imagine - they can't fly, they're nocturnal, they're the only birds with their nostrils at the end of their beak and have a fantastic sense of smell as a result, but not that great eyesight, their body temperature is 38 degrees (lower than most other birds), they have two working ovaries (most birds have one), feathers that are more like hair, and they find their food by snuffling about in the undergrowth - occupying the niche that is normally taken up by rodents in other countries (there were no mammals in New Zealand until man came along, so the kiwi evolved to make use of this food source going spare, until the rodents turned up in droves, taking their food and eating their eggs and young). This experience was far more exciting than seeing the sperm whale, despite the cool pictures. Maybe it was the smaller group size, or the decidedly more low key, low-tech approach to locating endangered species. Either way, it just felt like a much more personal experience.
After the kiwi moved on to a different spot, we went back to our cabins, celebrated with a glass of wine, and went to bed. I stayed up until 1am finishing off "The Bone People" - an extremely heavy and difficult read, written by a New Zealander who won the Booker prize for it in the 80s. At 3am I woke needing the loo, and after my traditional 10 minutes of lying there, kidding myself that I can maybe go back to sleep without having to get up, I dragged myself out of the cabin, glanced up and woke up properly - the display the galaxy put on that evening was so amazing. It wasn't just that I could see the milky way, it was the detail of it that was astonishing. I've never seen the stars in the night sky so vividly - it's not surprising really, there are no lights on in the Kauri park, or for miles around at night and there's very little pollution. What a wonderful night.
The next morning I wandered round the various walks in the Kauri park, going up to a viewing spot and seeing these enormous kauri trees that dwarfed the people standing next to them. The first one I went to see was the largest Kauri tree in NZ - Tane Mahuta - the God of the forest. I was just wandering along, asking the people I was walking with how to recognise a Kauri tree, the guy just laughed and said "You'll know when you see this one". He was quite right, a few seconds later we walked out into a clearing and the first words out of my mouth were "Bugger me" when I spotted the enormous tree in front of me. I was informed by a sign that the tree was 2000 years old, 51.5m tall and has a girth of 12.8m (I winced and regretted my first words). It was only when we went to see the 7th largest Kauri tree - Yakas - that I had a proper understanding of just how awesome these trees are. Yakas is the only one you're allowed to stand next to or touch (giving you a proper sense of perspective), the others you can't get within 5m of. I tried to hug Yakas - I couldn't quite get my arms around it. Kauri trees are not just awe inspiring, beautiful trees, they're also an important species environmentally, as Kauri forests are one of the most diverse types found in NZ. Add to this the fact that they're incredibly useful scientifically - you can cut a core from the trunk right to the centre without the tree sustaining any lasting damage, and the tree rings on that core provides all sorts of useful information about environmental conditions in the last 2000 years - particularly useful when studying phenomena such as El Nino or global warming. After about 4 hours walking I went for a swim in a lovely little swimming hole, then went back to the visitors centre feeling refreshed to collect my stuff.
That afternoon I made my way up to Omapere (annoyingly I had to go an hour out of my way to get to the nearest town with a cash machine as I hadn't seen one for days in Northland), located the charming Globe Trekkers hostel run by the extremely helpful Mike, who offered to run me down to the supermarket as it seemed to be quiet on the front desk. I spent the evening chatting with a Canadian couple - Kamil and his girlfriend (whose name eludes me), and my dorm mate Nicole, cooking food, and drinking pinot noir and later on hot chocolate.
The next day I took the boat across the harbour to a peninsula covered in enormous sand dunes that look completely incongruous next to the verdant hills opposite. Honestly, looking across the harbour on a sunny day, you feel like you're in Africa somewhere. The boat dropped me off at the bottom of the dunes with a sandboard, I laboured my way to the top of the nearest dune (only about 30m, but you take a stride of 40cm, then sink 20cm back down - it's bloody hard work), then took a running start, threw myself onto my front on the sandboard, and went flying down the sand dune. You go so fast (up to 20km/hr) that when you reach the bottom of the dune and hit the water, you go skimming across the surface for a few metres before you slow down and sink. I went up again and again (it was sooooooo much fun), and when I tired of climbing the dune, I swam in the water with a lovely Maori girl who'd just turned 11 that day. We did handstands in the water and I tried to teach her to do somersaults. At one point, standing on the top of the sand dune, I saw a stingray swimming through the water past a couple of other sandboarders (and christ did the birthday girl shriek! Unnecessarily I might add, they only sting humans when they're threatened, and then it just hurts like buggery, unless you're unlucky enough for the stinger to pierce a vital organ).
Lovely Mike joined us drinking that evening. He managed to get almost the entire hostel involved in a darts game called killer (you have to pick a number by throwing a dart left handed, when you've actually managed to hit the board, you then have to hit your number again - right handed this time - to activate it and become a killer, and from that point on you try to hit other people's numbers to take away one of their 3 lives, and eventually knock them out). Somehow my name appeared on the board, despite my protests, and inevitably I was shockingly bad at it. So bad in fact, that in the first game, the only person I managed to kill was myself. Twice. During the second game no-one really bothered trying to eliminate me (understandably), although I would have appreciated being put out of my misery as I tried again and again to hit my number and become a killer, while everyone around me massacred each other. Eventually I finally managed to activate my number and achieve killer status, only to find that I was one of three people left in the game, and the only one with all three lives intact. Mike knocked out a charming old duffer called John and started trying to kill me, but then something wholly unexpected happened. I actually hit the number I was aiming for on the dartboard and took away Mike's last life before he could kill me off. I started dancing around purporting to be a cold-blooded killer and telling everyone that I'd intended to be that bad, and was in fact a hustler. I don't think I convinced anyone. I taught the few people who were still up how to play "in the pot" and then stayed up chatting to Nicole and Mike until the fairly late hours of the morning.
The next morning after a slow start, I packed my stuff and spent most of the day heading off to the bay of islands on the East coast. I didn't realise just how far away from the ferry port the backpackers was and was in agony by the time I'd carried my numerous bags for about 20mins, only to be told by the owners that I should have phoned for a lift. Hmmmph.
In the morning I did my washing, including my bikini, but as the sun was shining beautifully (the weather in Northland is stunning compared to the rest of NZ, known in Maori as Aotearoa - the land of the long white cloud), I located the nearest nudey beach and went au naturel. After a relaxing morning I went back across the bay to Paihia to the treaty house - where the peace treaty between the English and the Maoris was signed on 6th February (Waitangi day) 1840. In the run up to Waitangi day there've been a series of concerts outside the treaty house, so I went along, discovered that I'd just missed one of the bands I wanted to see, and the other had cancelled, so I sat there in a bit of a huff. There was a toddler about 1 year old sitting near me. I pulled all sorts of ugly faces at her - she was amazingly fast on the uptake - quite an immitator - she kept trying to pull the same faces back, then would do a wicked little giggle that involved wrinking up her nose and dimples appearing in her hugely chubby cheeks. By the time I left I was in a far better mood, and she'd learnt several new facial expressions, including sticking your tongue out at someone else (an important skill in life), which she really had down to pat.
I went back to the hostel and slobbed in front of Finding Nemo with some very unimaginative pasta.
Yesterday morning I went for another sun worshipping session, then headed off to Kerikeri, where the Black Seeds (a dub band that I've heard a fair bit of since being here) were playing that evening. I found a hostel, chatted to my dorm mates, went food shopping, then got ready. I got tarted up in my new skirt, and actually managed to leave the hostel this time. The gig was fantastic. It was held in a really small venue (there can't have been more than 100 people there) that felt really intimate. The band were amazing - nobody seemed able to stand still, and watching everyone throwing some very outlandish shapes on the dancefloor was a real treat. I danced with a lively Maori girl called Maria, who danced with roughly the same balance of not much grace, but an abundance of energy and enthusiasm, as me (if I don't almost fall over several times during a song, I don't feel that I've really gone for it properly). Later on I ran into Ramona - the girl who'd given me a lift to the Kaori forest, who'd introduced me to the Black Seeds' music in the first place. We had a good dance, and then I hung around after the gig for long enough to tell a couple of band members how much I'd enjoyed it.
Today, when I can be bothered, I'll head south to Whangerei where I will hopefully scuba dive the world class Poor Knights islands, and then I'll head back south to Raglan, where the weather is sadly less glorious, but where I will hopefully be able to retrieve my washing and surf a bit more.
Photos will appear soon, honestly. Watch this space...
posted by Cat D @ 1:08 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home