Day 118 - Whangerei

I don't really get WHY we went to Whangerei. I think its because it was 'on-the-way' to Kerikeri, but it wasn't in our guidebook, and I don't remember what made us want to go there. but we did. And it was alright.



We checked into a weird hostel with a host who looked like Noel Edmunds, who had a bilingual dog and told us off every 2 hours for being noisy/messy/intrusive. He also had a ferral cat, which made us laugh for about 2 hours.



But anyway, the rain was pouring down the day we were due to explore the area, so with nothing else to do, we drove to the local CLOCK museum. Just when you thought clocks couldn't get more interesting, they went and opened a museum with about 10,000 clocks in it.





That was nuts. Cos the woman who runs the place was a bit psycho. And the clocks are pretty cool in bulk. I loved it. So then, in the rain, we bombed across town to the local waterfall, which usually is quite sedate, but due to today's horrendous downpour, it was massively overflowing, and quite exciting. I Again, I loved it.





And then in the evening, we watched The Whale Rider. If you haven't seen it, its awesome. And great for us, cos we are going to the town where it was filmed in a week. I didn't cry, but I let out a wimper near the end. Its pretty special. Rent it.

In the morning, we packed our stuff, hopped in the Laser (our car is a Ford Laser, how cool is that?) and drove to some caves nearby. Sam wasn't that fussed, and Eve slipped in the mud (covering herself in it), so I went exploring on my own.





It was beautiful. Within 2 minutes, you felt about a million miles from anywhere. Nobody around, just rocks, streams, big trees. For an hour I wandered, exploring. The caves were too wet to enter, but the place was magical.











And I found this weird grave of a 2-year-old kid from 1882, but got a bit freaked out and legged it back to the girls. And we started the 2 hour drive to kerikeri, a small town on the beautiful Bay of Islands in the supposed 'winterless' north...