new zealand - greener and warmer?

matt met me at the airport, and while we waited for my tent to be sanitized through biological control, laura arrived as well. my tent was returned in an inside-out, unzipped, thrown about bundle but was soon stuffed back in its sack and away we went.

laura spirited me away for the weekend to a bach (rental house) in whangamata (fang-a-maw-tah hahahaha) on the coromandel peninsula on the pacific ocean with friends of matt's parents ( = jolly english older people, one set live-in kiwis and one set on holiday). it was quite fun. they were lovely to talk to and hang out with. the bach was right on the beach and you could hear the sounds of the gentle surf all the time.

i had been quite cold most days in adelaide, melbourne, and syndey bc of the rain and things, but here i am in shorts and tshirt in the sunshine and it is a welcome change after a week of rain. but again you cant complain about the rainy weather when everyone is so happy about it bc they havent had it in months. and this place is green. so green it hurts your eyes when the sun is shining.

it was a lazy saturday morning of eating breakfast twice, drinking tea and then coffee, reading books, and walking on the beach looking at the multitides of shiny iridescent shells.

yesterday afternoon we took a side trip to hot water beach near haihai (haw-hey). we inherited someone's hole so we didnt even have to dig one. basically there is hot water seeping through the sand on the beach and when the tide is going out, you dig a hole in the sand, in seeps the hot water, and voila! sandy beach spa. and some of it is HOT - burning hot. and a foot a way if you dig in the sand it is COLD. it was a really odd thing - but heaps of fun with 5 english people and laura and me. there was a really hot spot right outside our dug-spa where people were walking and it was fun to watch the reactions and hear the foreign accents of the people as they walked over it. even i was skeptical of how hot the water was going to be - i mean it is on the beach - it is hilarious to see that skepticism turned into fact on other people's faces.

we finished the evening with a smorgasbord of whatever everyone had brought with them to eat, wine, and a hardcore game of team scrabble. dave was my teammate and it was a tough competition. we did win - even with two turns not scoring bc of a challenge and our words not being in the 1975 pocket dictionary (the only dictionary available in the house - zap isnt even in it. then it became fun to challenge words you would normally accept just to see if they were in that dictionary. most of the time they werent.) then we played a lazy round of trivial pursuit, merely asking the questions and providing funny but somewhat related stories, some star gazing and bed.

the next morning was a lazy start, followed by cleaning, packing, and hiting the road. we stopped at a place so i could try kumera chips. i was told they were like sweet potato chips - they werent - but they werent quite potatoes either. they were good though. on the way home on the windy-make-kim-carsick road we stopped at a gorge and went for a hike. we ended up walking through this old railway tunnel that was dark, damp, and LONG. it took us at least 15 minutes to walk through it, but the electric GREEN scenery and babbling brooks on either side were lovely.

and now i am back at laura's, sorting through my bag, pulling out laundry, and wondering where all this stuff came from.