We thought it best to get away from the shop ASAP this morning, so ate breakfast at a picnic spot along the drive- despite the route 12 road being longer, we thought we may as well drive down the west coast to see both sides. Further along we stopped at a lodge so we could pay $5 each to use the showers, and to wash up our mugs and cutlery, and to clean up the fridge, which you can detach and use as a cool box, because our milk had spilt everywhere in it. It was in a quite remote location, and so it overlooked the vast expanse of green that this trip has so far demonstrated New Zealand has- it kind of reminds us of Teletubby land because it's such a bright green!

It's annoying as I'm sure I read in the Lonely Planet what kauri's are but couldn't find it when we drove through Waipoua forest. I think they are spirits inside trees but could be wrong. Anyway, the 2 kauri's we stopped at to look at were Tane Mahuta (Giant Kauri) and 4 sisters (Can't remember the Maori name). Tane Mahuta is 2000 years old and the trunk was huge- it really doesn't show in the pictures just how big it is! One man said that before you were restricted to the footpaths, he would go and hold hands with a group of people to make a ring round it. 4 sisters weren't as impressive, but are so called because they are joined at the roots.

So that we could compare East and West coast beaches, and to see a black sand beach, we made Piha our place to aim for tonight, as we had seen Clair Gordon, a girl from school, had posted a status about it, calling it paradise. We got there at a reasonable time, despite the woman at the lodge saying it would be busy traffic. We climbed up Lion Rock, and then had a walk around to see what facilities Piha had. After cooking dinner, we had a drink in the R.S.A club so that we could charge some of our electrical devices (we're good at coming up with excuses aren't we?)