After Tairua, I headed to Auckland to pick up Annika at the airport. She spent a week there with a friend from Germany. Jon and Tayla headed south to Tauranga to meet up with some randoms we met at the beach house who had a possible job for them. Naima and Carl were getting ready for their trip to Indonesia. This left the Venuatu guys and the leftovers of us pickers: Linda, Pietro, and Franchesco.
From Auckland, Annika and I drove down to Raglan area to spend a few days. We stayed at a nice holiday park which let us shower and do our laundry. The weather was unfortunately very rainy being that it is winter here. We spent some time planning how we were going to travel and what we wanted to see.
One of the afternoons was relatively clear and we went to the Bridal Veil Falls. It is a smallish river which shoots water over an old volcanic cliff face in the middle of no where. The cool thing about the falls is you start at the top of it. There is a platform right next to the mouth of the falls, approximately 55 m high. You can then take some relatively steep steps down to the bottom with a few viewing platforms along the way.
After 2 nights in Raglan, we traveled towards Hamilton. There we visited a museum which showed the history of the Maori people in the Waikato region, including their persecution and conscription during the world wars. We found a cheap place to camp outside the city at Camp Narrow, a small christian camp and returned to Hamilton that night to go to a games night on the university campus. It was an interesting group of people and unfortunately the regulars were late and so our game selection was limited.
The next day we went on a hike to Maungakawa track. It's an old property which was converted into a tuberculosis treatment center and later injured soldiers. It was a nice short walk through a wooded lot, a few information signs and a short walk to the top of the hill where a radio tower is located.
After the walk, we went to the Hamilton Garden which is a free garden with many differently themed areas. Due to the time of year, there wasn't much in bloom but it was cool to see the different areas. There were some imitation gardens from different time periods, a medical herb and cooking herb garden, a vegetable garden, and of course multiple types of flower gardens.
After showering and eating at the camp ground, we returned to Hamilton to spend the night in the casino. We arrived in town, bought dinner at a small pub and watched the pub quiz. To kill time, we joined a pool hall and spent a couple hours playing pool before heading to the casino for 1 am. We came since the world cup was on and Germany was playing Korea at 2 am. Unfortunately the one set of TV's did not have the correct channel and was showing Mexico vs. Sweden (?) but the casino was nice enough to set up the projector for us to watch the game. We were the only people there.
After the game, we returned to camp and slept a bit before heading back to Auckland. Here we were meeting another German and going to the Auckland Hurricane vs. Cantebury something or others play rugby at Edan Field. We reserved rooms at the Grafton Backpackers. Flo showed up a bit later and we headed out to grab dinner, played some pool to kill time, then watch the game. A nice older couple sitting next to us helped explain some of the rules we didn't know. After the game, we returned to the hostel and played Terraforming Mars before going to bed.
The next day we headed back to Tauranga to meet up with Jon and Tayla. Annika was hoping to sell her van to Tayla but it unfortunately broke down. We cleaned out the car of anything useful and had to spend the weekend in Tauranga area waiting for Monday to deal with the car. We hung out with Jon and Tayla, ate pizza, and slept in a free parking lot for the night. The next day, Flo took us on two hikes. One was to the Kaiate Falls. It's a small walk where the water flows down through two water falls with some really cool rock formations. The one fall has a large pool underneath it with some rope swings for swimming.
The other walk was up Mt. Maunganui. It is a nice walk which overlooks Tauranga and the coast. The next day, Annika called up a few companies which dealt with broken down cars and unfortunately got a lot less money then she wanted.
During this time, we discussed what we wanted to do and she brought up the idea of Helpx. We contacted a few different people in the New Plymouth area where we wanted to go next. Due to the weather, a few of the people did not have any work for us but in the end we got contacted by a couple who had gardening work that they needed help with. So after saying goodbye to Jon and Tayla, we headed south west to New Plymouth to our new "home".
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