GOAT ISLAND, NORTH IS, NZ

Day 334

Thursday 31st January 2008

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Dad would have been 85 today!!!
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Goat Island Holiday Park $15 ea per night plus $1 ea per shower!

We slept really well last night. Our air bed was So comfortable. We also found out it’s waterproof! It rained in the morning..we awoke listening to a guy ringing a tour company to tell them he wanted to cancel his boat trip (Boating is definitely the thing a lot of people do in the Bay of Islands).

We wanted to stay cuddled up in bed..but we had thing to do, places to see..and a very hungry stomach! Our breakfast was limited, once again. Bread with vegemite! (Can’t get enough of it!) We completed our breakfast with an apple and a banana. We really need to get some cutlery so we can cut fruit and vegetables..and use the bbq’s.

After packing up our tent we headed out of the caravan park, a bit sad, because it would have been nice to stay longer and walk the trail that I could see above our tent site!

We looked at some other sites for future reference and found a tent site at the Haruru Falls. It looked so peaceful and green and had a gorgeous view.
Highway 10 was even beautiful.

The thing about driving in NZ is…there is no shortage of scenery! No long stretches of boredom . There are lakes and rivers and forest and beautiful scenery everywhere! We drove passed Matauri Bay to Tauranga (where I remembered some friends of ours lived – Charles!) and drove the scenic loop in Cable/Coopers Beach and later, another loop in Pakiri to Goat Island Marine Reserve.

This is a place where we particularly wanted to see because we’d heard it’s quite spectacular. There is one caravan park there with the same name. Knowing we needed to charge the dreaded camera and the mobile phone we drove in and saw it was only a large expanse of green grass…with no powered sites. It had an amazing view of the bay though..and lots of green pastures and cows.

Reluctantly we drove out of this park to find another one that may have a powered site. We ended up coming back to the Goat Island Holiday Park tho! The other’s didn’t have the view! And..we later found out we could charge the camera in the family room at the park.

That’s one thing about the Caravan Parks, or Holiday parks as the Kiwi’s call them, they all have a communal area with kitchen and power sockets. Unfortunately the camera needed more than a charge, it needed tossing. IT conked out. We couldn’t get it going at all! What to do? We decided to go back to Auckland and see if Dick Smith (the outlet for Samsung) could fix it or change it for another one, since it’s under Warranty.

We put our tent up better this time! And we were right out on our own, against the backdrop of blue water, green pastures and howling cows! (No kidding..they really did howl when they mooed!)

We still didn’t have our pump so poor Greg blew up the mattress while I babysitted the charger in the ‘family room’. That was before we realized the camera was on it’s last legs (have we overused it??) and we were trying to charge it to it’s full capacity so the lens would go back in!

Tomorrow, we will buy the pump! And sort out our camera situation. Greg was withdrawing without the camera!~ And although it was nice not hearing that familiar, click, I was also mourning it’s loss. We really wanted to remember the view here at Goat Island!

Once again, we could smell the bbq’s……….but we ate Subway for dinner. Can’t wait to get to South Island so we can buy our utensils so we can cook on the bbq’s. Smelling everyone’s cooking has knobs on it!!!

The people at Goat Island site were mostly Maori’s on the last of the school holidays. They were so friendly. And all sat in a big group talking and singing. Reminded us of Angie’s family. So colourful, happy and family orientated.

The showers are to be desired here. There are only two per gender. And, they charge a dollar for the showers and they were not that clean. It really makes the difference when the showers are clean.

Communal showers are something I don’t like at all. I don’t like being in hostel dorms, and don’t like camping showers. But, we’re really saving a lot by camping this way..and we’re at the end of our trip so the money’s getting tighter by the minute!

Camping is great fun though…and aside from not having the comforts of ‘home’ we’re enjoying being at the camping grounds. And our bed is SO comfortable! There’s nothing like sleeping on a blow up mattress! (I’m not kidding!)

We zonked out again tonight. Really tired. Must be the fresh air…or not having any privacy, or time out from the world, not sure. I can usually stay up reading really late, but since being in NZ, I’ve been wanting to go to bed about 9pm..and not being able to get there till about 10pm and being absolutely exhausted when I finally sink into my pillow!

Jet lag still? Or is it because I know we’re on the homestraight and I’m winding down. Could even be because I feel more relaxed here. Whatever it is, I feel very tired.