Ridiculous Life

hello everyone!

We have been on the north island for the past couple weeks now. We spent about a week and a half in Wellington; it was very weird to be in the city after being in the middle of the boondocks for so long. At first we were wildly indignant just at the fact buildings were so close together and there were so many people and cars getting in our way. It took us a few days to reconcile ourselves to civilization again and we had a great time doing city activities.
(we still really miss our sheep and wide spaces of the south island though)

We went to the Te Papa museum, rode our bikes around the Wellington bay, spent hours in bookstores, watched classic Kiwi movies at a film archive, rode out to the Weta workshop, watched skaters and longboarders at the skatepark, raided thrift stores for giant New Zealand woolly sweaters, spent an afternoon learning to kickbox with our Irish friend Jerrod from our hostel, went to a comedy show and a small "country" concert (turned out to be emo/indie/grunge rock but we enjoyed it nonetheless), and walked all over and around the city wide-eyed at how many people there were.

We sold the bikes in Wellington.
It was a dark and gut-wrentching day.
We wore mourning colors and said a few tearful words and rented a car again for the road trip to Auckland.
It took about three days (at a very leisurly pace) to drive up the east coast. We tasted wine in Hawke's Bay, tasted cider in Gisbourne and got to tour a microbrewery there too, it was very interesting. The highlight of the east coast was watching the sunrise from the East cape lighthouse. We woke up at five and drove there to hike up 700 steps to the top of the cliff. It was a gorgeous golden sunrise. The lighthouse is the farthest eastern piece of land below the dayline. So that means we were the first people on earth to see the sun come up that day. That's a cool thought. There was a group of five ladies up there celebrating the sunrise with champange. Five times a year they go up there to celebrate each lady's birthday! We heartily approved this tradition and they invited us to one of the lady's beachouse where they stay every time they drive up from Gisbourne to the lighthouse. On the way there they stopped to show us the biggest Pohutakawa tree in NZ. It was a sight to behold. They made us a delicous morning tea and entertained us with their funny stories and good humored teasing. We were very sad to leave them.

From the lighthouse we drove to Wahi Beach where we got to stay a few days in a friend's beachouse! We had a beautiful house all to ourselves not even 30 meters from the ocean. It was awesome. We cooked in a real kitchen, slept in beautiful comfy beds, took hot showers, and did laundry in an actual washing machine for the first time in more than a month!!!! For the next few days we would drive up the Coromandel Penninsela exploring during the daytime and come back to the beachouse at night. I ate the most delicious pancake breakfast of my life at a little organic cafe in Coromandel Town, we examined beautiful pottery at a small place just down the road, lay on our backs in a Kauri tree grove looking up at the 600 year old trees towering 60 meters above us, dug a hot tub in the sand at Hot Water Beach and lay in the steaming water all afternoon sipping cider and watching the waves and reading, and hiked to Cathedral Cove to watch a magnificent sunset color the sky. That is the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. We feasted on alvacados and kiwis we bought by the bag from people selling them by the road and kept exclaiming to each other how wildly happy we were.


We fly to Oz land on Monday. I know it will kill me to leave but I'm thrilled to be moving on to a new place and I can't wait to explore Australia. As the time in NZ comes to an end we keep trying to make a list of all the good moments and it seems like we end up covering about every moment on the trip (however Goat Hills dominates the conversation by far). We've had a tremendous time in New Zealand. Most of the time making the list we're laughing so hard it hurts my chest and I think my heart can't pump enough blood to keep up with the happiness. Life is pretty dang good.