It started raining in the night and we have discovered when the rain comes in from the east it just rains and rains non stop. At least in England we know rain usually stops after a few hours. We started the day with a dip in the hot spa mineral pool which has a sun shade to shelter you from rain!
Graham had downloaded a few geocaches so he found one close to the campsite and then we drove up north towards Aukland. As we hit the motorway through Aukland the traffic came to a standstill, we weren't use to this sort of traffic and in torrential rain it was not much fun. Still it was just city traffic and eventually got moving and we crossed the lovely harbour bridge with beautiful views of the harbour (we had to use our imagination here because we couldn't see any water apart from that lashing our windscreen). We didn't do any long walks, we stopped by a beach to watch the kite surfers in the gale force winds and visited an information centre where the lady could only suggest visits to museums, but we hadn't come to NZ for museums, so we continued with our plans to go to Mangawhai Heads which has some lovely walks. When we got here the rain had slightly eased and we decided to walk up to a headland to look at the view, which was lovely but not at its best! The white beaches and sand spit will look lovely tomorrow in the sun.....
The best news of the day was that Graham has achieved his life's time ambition today of finding a geocache without knowing the location, how sad is he! A viewpoint on top of a headland is always a good location for a geocache, so just randomly snooping around in bushes he found one. A happy old boy in the rain!
We decided to stay on the campsite on the beach at this location. It is very idyllic with lovely sea views and palm trees lining the beach bending over in the rain and wind. The sea has a turquoise tinge so when the sky is blue I imagine it will be absolutely stunning.
We head north tomorrow to Whangarei and the Bay of Islands and weather is not looking too good so we might have use our imagination again because the coast is suppose to be beautiful.