Road Trip! First Stop: Hot Water Beach

 Marie from France, Me from Cali,

Sabrina from Germany, and Roelinda from the Netherlands.

I met some lovely ladies from around the world through Couchsurf.org. We all got together in Auckland and decided to go on a road trip together around the North and South islands of New Zealand. Together we can speak 5 different languages... and hear all sorts of conversations people don't think we'll understand, which is awesome!

Before we leave Auckland... let's take a look at a few more great street performers.

Good vibes! Spreading music and happiness all over the world.

 

 Jucy Campervan!

There's no hiding this bad boy.

Our Living Room.

...and bedroom, car seat, and dining room.

With 4 ladies living in this camper,

I wonder how long it's going to look like this.

 The back of the van.

We come fully equipped with fridge, kitchen, stove,

2 beds with duvets, sink, tv with dvd player, and lawn chairs.

On our first day we drove toward the Coromandel Peninsula. On our first night we found a spot to camp that was literally a pullout on the side of a mountain pass road. It was late and we were tired so it worked. The next day, Marie installed the Rankers app on her iPhone that shows us all of the free campspots in NZ. The first one we found was literally right on the waterfront.

 

Here we are eating at the dinner table!

I'm the campervan chef, and they do all the dishes and cleanup, cheers!

Here's the sunset on our beachfront property :P

Yeah, wow.

We stayed out on the park bench until the moon came out in the sky.

Super cute kitty was following me around everywhere I went.

Waking up in the morning,

nothing like hot tea on a windy beach morning to wake you up!

When we woke up we drove to Hot Water Beach, there is a natural hot spring that bubbles up right into the sand on the waterfront. If you dig a hole in the sand, you have your own natural hot tub right on the beach!


One side of the beach looks like this...


and the other looks like this!
Plenty of pre-dug free hot tubs to choose from.


We took over a hole and made it comfy.


Marie was taking the pics for us. It started sprinkling while we were there.
There's nothing as nice as a hot tub in the rain :)

Great start to a great adventure!

Auckland

Here I am in Auckland.

This is an installation in the Auckland Art Museum.

In Auckland I had a big new experience. I founda free place to stay through Couchsurfing.org for the first time. (Thanks to Lauren Smith and Brian Osper for the inspiration for this <3 ) This is my profile. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about doing this at first. Safety was my first concern, but the website makes it easy to see people's past experience and verification with the people they have hosted already, so I went for it. My first hosts (and only so far) were Tanya and Peter in Auckland. These Canadians were lovely hosts. They made me feel so welcome and showed me all around town, hung out to talk, and were just all around friendly. They hosted me for 5 nights in a row! Their place is literally right down the street from the Skytower, which is the tallest building on the southern hemisphere.

The Skytower!

On my first day Tanya showed their other guest Anne (from France) and I around Auckland, including Queen Street (the main drag), the bay where you can see many of the America's cup sailing boats and luxury yachts, the i-Site (where you can find information about travelling all over NZ), and she even helped me to find a super cheap phone and service which has come in very handy while I'm here. Thanks Tanya!!!!

I love a good street performer. This one is famous on Queen Street.

 Sculptures at WETA Studio's gift shop at the i-Site in Auckland.

.Life-Sized Avatar Sculpture.

Sculpture in the Auckland Art Museum.

 This is the incredible view from Tanya and Peter's apartment, 9 stories up and looking right out over the city and the water. They get amazing sunsets from this vantage point every evening. I'm so glad I could see this!

Sunset over Tanya and Peter's place.

I missed getting any pictures of Tanya...

HOW COULD I LET THIS HAPPEN?!

I'm coming back for you Tanya!

Tanya is a school teacher, and so she knows all of the latest NZ trends, pop-culture, and slang. It was hilarious to learn about some of the things that are special to this place. I'll share some of them with you:

This is a NZ favorite.
They are basically pineapple taffy covered in chocolate.

Tasty!

Nek Minute.

This is huuuuuuuuuuge here. There are Nek Minute buttons, shirts, whatever.

And people say it all the time and everyone laughs.

Legend.

The most popular commercial in NZ.

This is how they talk here too!

Cheap As!

...as what you ask?
As!
 

(pre-video note: "Sweet As!" is a huge saying here. It means awesome, or sweet, or the best. Basically if you want to say something is extreme, you say "_____ As". Like the above example... it's super cheap= it's cheap as!)

Beached As.
Quintessential Kiwi humor.

Cape Reinga and the Meeting of the Seas

Mom and I took the very long and windy drive up to scenic Cape Reinga. This is the most northern tip of New Zealand. It's a very spiritual place for the Maori, and its easy to see why when you arrive. This is the place that is believed to be the sending grounds for their spirits.

As I write this now I am using a French computer, all of the letters are mixed around so forgive any mistypes. Everything is underlined in the angry red of error since I'm writing in English anyway.

The entrance to the walk at Cape Reinga.

Te Werahi Beach.

This is your view to the left as you walk along the trail to the tip of New Zealand.

The coast east of New Zealand's tip.

The spiritual sending grounds of the Maori.

This is the spot where the spirits go when they die. There is a spring at the bottom of the tree you see that juts off the side of the rock. The spirits descend down the roots of this tree to the bottom where there is a spring of water. In order to pass into the afterlife, the spirit must drink from this spring.

The lighthouse.

Mom and I... a short stroll from LA.

Mom and I :)

This is where the Pacific Ocean of the east meets the Tasman Sea of the west. The Maori people believe it to be representative of male and female coming together to create life. Check it out, you can actually see the waters joining!

Sailing the Lion

 

Mom and I went sailing around the Bay of Islands today. There are 150 islands scattered all around the area. It was the perfect day, sunny and warm. OK well a real sailor would say it was almost perfect, because there was no wind in the morning, it picked up by lunch though. The boat we sailed was called the Lion New Zealand, it's an 80 ft maxi yacht buildt the year I was born for the Americas Cup, which it won the year after its creation. It went on to do an around the world sail competition and came in 2nd place. It's beautiful! And I wasn't just posing for that picture, I sailed it!

Sailing is awesome :)

 

I was a regular grinder! I had such a fun time! I got to grind, steer, tack, and rig it!

 

 Mom and I at the prow.

Here's a smaller boat we raced...

 I love this picture of Mom. I was going to take her picture,
then the boat rocked suddenly, we both moved, and the picture became candid, beautiful!

  

I even got to steer when it we did a full tack,

it was pretty tough holding this 110ft tall sailboat against a wind at full tack!

This boat can lean over so far that the railing submerges... hold on!

On the Lion.

Here's some pictures of the islands.

 

This is an island we stopped at for lunch, kayaking, snorkeling, and hiking.

Mom and I swam to the island and back, it was so much fun.

We just stayed in the water super long because it was so warm.

 From the top of the island.

 

There's the boat from the top of the island,

I swam out to is island you see on the left, once I got there though the ground was covered with sharp barnacles and shells so I just looked at it up close and swam back, ha!

We saw so many dolphins this day! They were even jumping out of the water 3 at a time all together.

Dolphins!

Day's end, thanks Lion!

This day was full of much sunbathing, sailing, snorkelling, swimming, and hiking.

A perfect adventure for the Bay of Islands!