Ah 2007, we like it already...

With the Christmas frolics all over, the weather warming up and still no jobs to occupy us, we couldn't resist Dave and Regans's offer to join them camping over New Year. We headed up north a bit to an area known as the Kauri Coast (apparently a kauri is a whopping great tree) and gleefully set about putting up our tent for the first time on the trip! Next to Dave and Regs' canvas mansion it looked a little dwarfed but it did us well and they kindly let us sit in their doorway in the bitter cold evenings!

We discovered camping Regan style was nothing like camping Matt style (to Cal's great relief!), instead of endless tins of dubious squishy meat or watery soup, we feasted on proper luxurious meals that actually had a taste! On New Year's Eve we had steak and prawns (king prawns to us - huge mammas) with potatoes, rice risotto and salad...mmmm. The campsite - Kauri Coast Top 10 site, if anyone's in the area! - was amazing with great facilities, and also had a river running right around it...lots of (potentially lethal) fun with 4 people on a tyre tube over rapids!

The campsite went the extra mile and put on an awesome fireworks display for New Year, unfortunately we were unaware that we were sitting about 2 metres away from where they were all lit and very nearly lost our eyebrows a number of times! Thefour of us apparently exist in a parallel universe as our New Year arrived approximately 4 minutes earlier than everyone else's - to the jeers of our fellow campers as we counted down! Don't worry, we'll use that extra 4 minutes of 2007 well!

We also embraced our naturalistic sides and Matt cracked open the survival tin (yes ok he used it, but it was a contrived situation!) to make fishing lines and ingenious flax traps to catch eels. Some of them were over a metre long and as thick as your leg, luckily the one we caught was a little more modest. Dave was covered in slime for days from trying to hold it still, nice!

A little British family in a campervan next door to us really made us chuckle - at about 11.55pm their door opened and Mum, Dad and two very sleepy little girls stumbled out. They looked at each other, then Dad pulled out a huge rocket affair and set it off with a very loud bang. As we recovered from the shock, streamers and confetti drifted down softly over the entire campsite (yes the wardens blamed us!). The little family gave a satisfied nod, said 'Happy New Year' to each other quietly, and went back inside to bed. My, we laughed!

So all in all, our New Year was a blast...