NZ Day 27 and 28-Coromandel Peninsula to the Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga

We drove from The Coromandel Peninsula up to Paiai yesterday. It was our last long drive (and all the backsides said "yay").

We woke up and saw this momma duck with her ducklings. It's clear that people here feed them as she was willing to come very close to us. We didn't have any proper bird food so we didn't reward her bravery.

We knew that this far in to the trip we would want someone else to lead for a while. We booked in with Fuller's Great Sights to do their bus trip to Cape Reinga today and their boat cruise to the hole in the rock tomorrow.

This is the old people trip and we were good with that. So much "...and if you look to your left you will see.." perfect. We passed amazing scenery. AH-MAZE-ING. I all but started passing Dave's resume out to schools as we passed by. Sigh. 5 sleeps until we fly home. Wait, maybe I'll go back and pass out those resumes.

We are all SO EXCITED to be coming home. I'm sure that will wear off but for now we are looking forward to our family, friends, DOG, house...our lives. Having this 5 week break between leaving Australia and returning to Ottawa was a great plan (pats self on back).

We stopped for morning tea and played at the beach.  

We walked through a very old forest and saw some MASSIVE trees. Our guide let us know that these are actually just babies at 1000 years old!
 We stopped for lunch (fish and chips) and stopped at the beach. Anyone who knows BigC knows that all of this beach time was completely perfect for him.

We went to the very far north of New Zealand and got to see where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. We learned a tremendous amount of Maori culture.

We went to some sand dunes on 90 Mile Beach and went sandboarding. BigC wanted to go but got a bit nervous at the top. Grandma, he loved it. Said it was better done than when you guys went.

 Monkey was like a fish in water! That kid went as many times as he could and even created a new track. I told him that he may NEVER ride a motorcycle. BigC drives luge carts and sand boards so cautiously that I'd likely give him my car keys now.

We went to 90 Mile Beach and picked clams. They were EVERYWHERE! Monkey is very excited to have some for dinner....until we explained that they would be out of the fridge for a few hours and that we didn't really feel like having a kid puking all night...

Today was awesome and exactly the right speed for us at this stage (more than 4 weeks in). Looking forward to tomorrow's boat tour.