You know when you suddenly think to yourself, "screw it, you only live once, let's do this"? Well, that's what Vick and I thought that rainy morning after our bath (in the naturally heated pool!). The drive to the most northern point of new zealand was around 700-800km and well worth it!

Originally we were just going to visit the Bay of Islands about an hour north of Auckland. But the rain in Matamata meant that we would have to hang around for a day in the rain, maybe get wet on a walk, and then drive a short journey to probably arrive in more rain! So we got our supplies and headed off.

At first the driving was rather hairy..the winds were over 120km fast and came horizontally into the side of the van so you could feel it swaying in the wind as you were driving on. it's always a bit daunting when the lorry drivers aren't even driving! But Hugo kept us safe and we found ourselves passing through Auckland (and getting very excited for staying there in a few days!) and up the northern neck of kiwi land. In the picture you can see that on the eastern side of this neck it's rather flat by the sea - this is a beach! The top bit of it has actually been named 99 mile beach (although it's more like 99km beach). Along it runs a spine of HUGE sandunes - big enough that you can't actually see the beach from the road (think Sahara Desert!).

Vick and I kept ourselves occupied for a good few hours again with snog, marry, kill. Some of the answers were getting pretty amusing (and a bit worrying) so eye-spy was played a few times, yellow car game (despite the fact it was now dark and there were a severe lack of cars on the road). We spent about 30 minutes in silence individually working out WHAT was in the car infront of us. WhenI noticed Vick looking at the car weirdly I figured we were both as confused as each other. Turns out it was a dog, but we couldn't work out how it was moving so quickly from one window to the other. Deep discussion involved the options of what it could be, two dogs?, 1 really fast dog? a really long dog that could just lean out both sides?! Turns out it was in the open trailor on the back of the pickup truck so that gave us some amusment.

You might be pondering that vick and I are getting rather excited and amused by small, simple things. Yes, you are quite right. We even have moments of madness where we just speak in another accent to each other for hours. I have quite mastered being a turkey farmer from County Galway, whilst Vick is a traveller from Colorado. We even spent a good 44 minutes (to be exact) debating why "Nice" biscuits out in NZ aren't as nice as the Nice biscuits from england! We still don't know why and it still upsets us that NZ Nice biscuits aren't that nice after all!

After a long journey filled with slight madness (we blame cabin fever and too many sheep instead of people around) we finally arrived at the beach close to Cape Reinga in the dark. We have got quite accustomed to arriving in the darkness and awaiting the morning to see just how close we are to the nearest water source (usually too close for our liking). But this beach had a loud surf, and so it was quite clear as to where was too close and where was perfect. There were also people at this campsite - a rare occurence!

Vick and I have also become quite accustomed to using the great outdoors as our toilet - the composting loos i'm scared I will fall down and never come out - especially in the dark! So during my midnight pee (sorry for the details this does lead to a story i promise) I looked up, and boy oh boy, I have never seen stars like it. Talk about having an atmospheric toilet. THEY WERE INSANE. I saw plentiful shooting stars, and for every star I saw there were tens, hundreds even of other stars. Quite astonishing. The milky way was clear enough, and my knowledge in astronomy showed the plough (but that's about as far as my astronomy knowledge goes!) if only I had my brothers star app! I am sure I would have seen most of the constellations! I even tried to intice Vick out. She was too cosy in bed, but when she went for her midnight pee I just heard her saying WOW!

That morning we woke up to a beautiful beach. Golden sand, clear sea, huge waves! It was tucked inside a bay a few kilmetres down for Cape Reinga and it's lighthouse. And that's where we walked. The walk itself was meant to take 2.5 hours each way (despite being 5km it was up, and really do mean up hill and back down hill again). In fact it was more like climbing mountains than hills -and I even climb mountains! Just these ones were without the snow and had a sheer drop to the sea on our right. We did the whole thing in 3.5 hours! Talk about walk marching! Our calf muscles would hurt for days but the views we saw were incredible.

At Cape Reinga itself, along with the lighthouse there was a pole with all the arrows to different world cities on. It was a bit of a kick in the teeth but seeing that London was over 18000km away did make me miss home a tad. The views shortly distracted me though - Cape Reinga is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tazman Sea and so the currents are pretty dramatic. Not somewhere I would like to get caught in a Canoe! It is also a very sacred place to the Maori. The Maori believe that the foot jutting out of the headland is where they souls go last before they either go to their homeland or come back on earth as a living thing. There is a large tree at the bottom which they say the souls go down through the roots and off out into the sea.

After our magical route march Vick and I headed back down south stopping at 99 mile beach on the way. We didn't actually sea the beach due to the size of the sandunes but we did have a lot of fun sliding down the sand like a snake having a ball. I tried to see the sea, but no matter how far I kept walking over these sandunes I still couldn't see it! Vick and I have a fab picture of us both jumping up in the air with these giants of dunes in the back ground. Mind, it did take about 20 attempts to get it perfect (we got ourselves quite an audience in the end - of cows though, there were no humans around). Yes, you read it right, cows by sandunes. Sheep too. That is one of the best things about NZ. Sandunes, ocean, vocanoes, rolling green hills and snowy capped mountains can all be seen in one drive. Just spectacular and so sereal you just kinda get used to it in the end saying to yourself "oh look, another spetacular view" *yawn*.

Heading down south we came across the Bay of Islands, another magical place. The Bay of Islands, is yup you guessed it, a bay full of islands. Some islands are large enough to have houses, even small towns on, whilst others are only just big enough for a tree or two. This is where a lot of the summer pictures of NZ are taken with the white sand beaches, aquaramine sea and palm trees. It's quite a popular holiday destination for all the youngsters, families, and old folk alike. We got told that Auckland is almost deserted in the summer time because most locals head up to the Bay of Islands. Unfortunately the view we got wasnt clear blue skies but a big rain cloud. Even so we could appreciate how it would look on a beautiful day!

Before we knew it we were heading back through Auckland where we had only driven a few days back and we found ourselves goggling over all of the luxurious houses in the suburbs. Wouldn't mind living there at all. Sea on one side, fields on the other, with a panoramic view that you can see Aucklands CBD and Sky Tower in. We stayed at Shakespear (it doesn't have an e before I get told off about the spelling) Regional Park. This beutiful place is at the end of headland with all the nice houses on. It also has a lot of glorious peacocks with their enormous plooms of those emerald feathers.

Basking in the evening sun with a cuppa, some popcorn and our books Vick and I were very happy bunnies. Could this holiday get any better?