February 25th 2021: Holiday

These are really weird times. While family and friends in the Netherlands are in lockdown, we in New Zealand can move around at will. So one day we were having our bi-weekly FDC (Friday night Drinking Club) at the beach in Otaki, 

and the next day I was meeting my family, on Zoom. Almost the only way for the family to see each other nowadays. Great that technology evolved so much that family, friends and even businesses can use it for extended communication. Nienke did mention that our conversations were not very structured. Well, I guess that is the difference between private and business. Or would she mean our family is ........

Friends had been paying attention very well and when Nienkes birthday was almost there she was given the lovely owls she had seen during a pottery festival. Our property is now constantly being watched.

Talking about festivals, this one in Paraparaumu beach must have been one of the weirdest we've been to. The organiser surely forgot to put the invitations in the mail as we were the only visitors, apart from a few other artists and an old man on a bicycle who probably needed the rest. Good music though. Hope next time they will do some advertising.

This is Tia, the 5 year old grand daughter of friends who look after her. Every now and then they need someone to 'baby-sit' for a day. This time I had put my hand up. Wasn't completely sure what I was in for. We started the day by feeding our animals. That's when she came up with the idea of painting the eggs. Nowhere near Easter yet, but why not. I was just a bit afraid of where the paint would end up. Of course that's when our cow came back from the butcher. I briefly left her to herself. When I had stacked all the meat in the freezer in the garage I ran back to the deck. Sure enough the whole egg was now blue, including parts of the table, her clothes ('where is Nienkes T-shirt I gave you/'), the chair and even the sink and tap in the toilet. All reversible issues. I later heard from Derene that Tia had taken the egg to her room, peeled of the shell, put it in the corner of her room and forgot all about it. Until Derene detected a volcanic smell in the house.

When I told Tia that Nienke and I were afraid of tsunami's she took me to the beach to build a wall. Because I had promised her ice cream we had to drive to Paraparaumu beach (as the ice cream we had was 'for grown ups' she said). There we walked along the beach and invented a new language which nobody (including me) can understand. Suddenly she jumped into the waves. Over and over again. I knew Derene had put some dry cloths in her backpack, but no towel. And I did not have one either. So we quickly drove home (she must have been cold as the conversation stopped for a while). I put her under a warm shower, just as 2 men turned up to revaluate our house. Running between the shower and the valuers I think I prevented further problems. Lunch had arrived. Did you know 5 year old's do not do afternoon naps anymore? Well I didn't and I did. Anyway, Tia and Derene were happy. I think I passed the test.

Nienkes birthday breakfast. Since the jeweler was closed, something less expensive. OK, I am a weakling. Finding jewelry for her is an exercise I do not want to do alone, I do not seem to know her style. More then willing to do it together, but she is not really into that stuff either. Some new music therefore. Old fashioned as CD's and from our own Kiwi-country of course. The latest from Mel Parsons and Fat Freddy's Drop.

And in the evening another treat, watching a movie in the hot tub. Well observed you! Some ugly grey plastic steps. Our old cedar steps collapsed unfortunately. Will soon make a new one.
On her actual birthday the annual barbeque of the Dutch borrelclub was on again. In our garden. Stunning weather. Great food and especially for Nienke an amazing tiramisu, made by a French chef. After the successful afternoon most people left. But there was still so much food and the day was still beautiful. So we called our friends to come over and finish the BBQ. A task we completed around 1 at night, I think....

A few days later Dick, Roger, Nettie and me played golf at Rangitara golf club. An 18 hole course with 6 courses on three tiers in the Rangitikei gorge. Just beautiful. I played + 1 (meaning I found 1 ball more than  I lost). After a beer and a burger I said goodbye to my friends and headed up north. My holiday had started.

Parked the van next to the Rangitikei river, grabbed my book and a cold hazy pale ale from the well stocked chilly bin and enjoyed the rest of the day.

The plan was that I would drive to HiHi in the Far north to join my fraternity club friend Wouter Jan in a Marlin fishing contest. Nienke would fly in a few days later. I had several short brakes on my 1000 km trip. One of them was here at Ocean beach north of Whangarei. To be honest, I did not plan to go here, but Google maps brought me here by mistake. Seriously... Discovered a beautiful camping spot here so I will return with Nienke.

Did not want to take the highway so I took the coastal route and discovered many amazing beaches. These panorama pictures are prove of that. This is Whangaumu Bay.

Matapouri Bay.

Woolleys Bay where I spend the night after realising WJ and Scott would launch the boat at 7 in the morning and if I continued I would arrive around midnight, exhausted. So I free-camped on the beach next to a friendly French couple. Cold dip in the ocean in the morning (like I had done in the Rangitikei river) and I was on my way again.

WJ and Scott did not catch a Marlin in the Whangaroa game fishing club competition. They did catch a yellow fin tuna though. So for the next 4 days the menu was 'tuna steaks with French fries and a salad'. Luckily I had a few matching bottles of white wine in the chilly bin. You see, a man does not need much.....

The next day the weather was far from good. An awful lot of wind. We did not catch anything worthwhile. No one caught a marlin and the (very expensive) prices (rod and reels costing over a 1000 dollar each) were given out drawing lucky numbers. We did not win those either..... And with the wind picking up even more over the next few days we were forced to play darts and eat tuna. We even played memory. It was a draw, so we are as smart or dement....

And Covid19 had suddenly returned to NZ. With Auckland in lockdown it was now uncertain that Nienke would be able to fly in.

Vincent, a really nice local, invited us over for a meal he and his Argentinian girlfriend Valentina had prepared. The cannelloni with lobster was a welcome change from the tuna. Of course there was some competition going on here as well.

Next day we had to fall back to our regular menu .....

We did go fishing in the bay. Only 3 boats dared to face the mighty waves in order to catch marlins on the first day of the HiHi classic. Two of them for about 15 minutes and the other for half an hour and that one lost a few parts of the boat in the 5 to 6 meter high waves. We tried to catch some snapper, but only the kindergarten was out there. 

Disappointed as we were Vincent and Valentina decided to comfort us with some more lobster (we emptied Vincents lobster pots on our way back home) to make up for the fact that we otherwise has to share 1 dubiously legal snapper.   

The HiHi marlin classic did not start out as a very successful event. We did not go out on day one. The second day we did get out Vincent and WJ were quite seasick and the catch was zip. The third day was not going well either. After trawling for most of the morning we decided to try some deep sea fishing (435 meter deep). Hoping to catch Blue nose (sea bass). We only caught a gem fish which only made the albatrosses and other birds happy. The others had just decided to call it a day when my tip of the rod suddenly dipped deep. The experts on board were sure it had to be a blue nose. Unfortunately it was a conga eel according to Vincent One of the ugliest creatures I have ever seen. That's when we decided to trawl home.

With just over an hour to go in the contest suddenly one of the reels made that famous sound of a game fish grabbing the lure. Excitement all over. Was it a marlin, a shark or a tuna? After some hard work the tuna showed it's yellow fins. 'Hans, grab the lead or the gaff''. That was like giving me the choice between the two most famous Iranian national dishes. Impossible if you don't know either. Turned out the lead was the last part of the fishing line and a gaff a nasty looking hook. Because of the size of the fish I was to take the large gaff. Remember your first swimming lessons? When the teacher had a large pole with a big hook he placed under your neck? Well, like that thing, only now the point of that hook was sharp as. It was not supposed to go under the tuna's neck either. It went through it. Finally our price fish was in. But now there was time pressure as the weighing of the tournament fish stopped at 6pm. There was no time to go back to the harbour so our captain rammed his boat almost the beach and WJ and me jumped overboard. The bin with the fish and ice was tossed overboard (handle breaking off of course). Lost some more time trying to avoid the boat to be beached. Then we tried to lift the fish and bin and bring it 750 meter further to the weighing station. Not as easy as it sounds. Meanwhile Nienke who had arrived a few hours earlier was observing this all from the beach. She suggested to get WJ's car as his house was close by. We made it with 3 minutes to spare, only to learn that we were 3rd.

Anyway, another 35.7 kg of tuna. This is I think the 6th bin of steaks arriving to be frozen. As Nienke and I were leaving in the morning with just our non-powered chilly-bin (we're still rookies) we could only take 3 packages of tuna with us.

So there we are, at Tapotupotu Bay, camping, parked next to the beach, eating a tuna steak on a bun with the prospect of having tuna again for lunch and the next day. Because of the temperature (30 degrees) I decided the last steaks were probably not going to make it safely till the next day, so I asked our 'neighbours' if they had dinner sorted. Thinking we were inviting ourselves for dinner she was a bit hesitant to answer, but when I explained our problems she was more than  happy to accept a bag with 3 well sized tuna steaks.

Beautiful bay. Still very windy though. The van was shaking all night. In the morning the windspeeds reached 63 km an hour with gusts much faster. So we decided not to do the walk over the ridge to Cape Reinga.

Instead we drove up to Cape Reinga and did the walk to a small beach behind Cape Maria van Diepen. Beautiful walk.

While descending the first part you could see the white foam where the Pacific ocean meets the Tasman sea.

Pastel coloured petrified sand.

The small beach we had chose was very nice, but not totally abandoned as three fishing boats had taken shelter for the fierce winds there. The waves were too high and the current too strong for skinny dipping anyway.

Because of a tangi (Maori funeral) the motel with hot shower we had our eye on was fully booked. So we camped again, this time at Spirit bay. An amazing long white sand beach surrounded by native bush and a mountain with wild horses on it.

Rare terns sitting on the beach.

Unfortunately our picture of the horses standing on the top of the mountain was way too dark, but this panorama gives a good impression of the eastern part of the beach with rocks full of small oysters, a tea coloured river and the mountain on the left.

15 years ago we swam at an amazing beach on the opposite side of 90 mile beach. Unfortunately we were not able to locate it on our way up north this time. Had already booked a motel in Manganui when we suddenly stumbled on exactly that beach. And it now boasted a DOC camping. So we called the motel. 'Postponing 1 night? No probs'. NZ! So we headed to a shop and bought some food (beef!!!) and ice and went back to 'our' beach. Rarawa beach.

Here also a nice stream from the camping to the ocean, with breeding birds on both sides. The camping, just like the previous ones, had toilets (long drops) and even cold showers and several taps in the camping areas. There were probably 5 or 6 other campers.

We found a nice sandy spot under some pohutekawa trees which apparently do not mind salty feet. Gave us the necessary shelter against the sun. Towel, e-books, a cold beer. What else do you need....

Nienke swimming where the river meets the ocean.

A duck came over to check (= beg) what we were having for dinner. Well, teriyaki beef with veggies and nothing for you mate. At night a possum came to check our garbage bag we had left outside. Another lesson learned; always bring your gun when you camp

A happy woman. Back on Coopers beach after 15 years. 

The view from our deck at the Mangonui motel. The famous 'Fush and chips shop', apparently the best of NZ was again a disappointment.
Last day in this area. We visited the KariKari estate (winery) on the KariKari peninsula. Met some very nice Italian/Uruguayan staff here, trapped (well, how bad is it really) in NZ by Covid19. Invited them over to Te Horo Beach. We'll see. We had a great view, food and pinot gris here.

The peninsula had a few great beaches. Picked the best, Matai bay. For a read, walk and swim.

Met a few winged friends here. These amazing gracious creatures are not afraid at all. Like spaceships they move through the water and almost swim onto the beach.

These two had a good meal. They found a dead snapper which they devoured before my eyes. Another great day. Tomorrow we'll go to KeriKeri to meet some friends at a Shakespeare play on a winery. Only in New Zealand!