December 29

Today it was awake at 0545, but not up until 0550. I prepared cups of tea and served them up with biscuits, then made my toast. Unfortunately I burned my fingers when I went to grab the toaster to put it away.
After that I showered, dressed, and then checked my email and uploaded some more photos. While I was doing that, Fran showered and dressed. We were ready to leave by 0710, so sat in the unti as it was pouring rain outside.
After a few false alarms (the buses doing tours pick up for each motel, so every tour who had people booked from our motel stopped here) our bus arrived at 0725 – it continued raining steadily.
We set off and were soon up to the Puketi Kauri Forest walk where we walked around, taking about ten minutes. By now the rain had backed off to a light drizzle.
Not too long after we arrived at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. Here, apart from a toilet break, we were able to see a staircase within one piece of swamp Kauri and a lot of (very expensive) furniture made from other pieces. We also bought postcards which were to be posted from the northernmost tip of New Zealand and quickly wrote messages on them so the driver could make sure they got posted.
Out trip then took us past Mangonui, Doubtless Bay and Kaitaia, and we soon arrived at the Sports Club at Hauhora for an early lunch (our times and direction were governed by the low tide, which was mid-afternoon today) and 1100 was an early lunch! We were soon off to Cape Rienga and a short walk through a new arch let us see the area before we walked about ten minutes to reach the lighthouse proper (I went via the bluff while Fran walked directly). After looking around there we drove to the turn-off to the Ninety Mile beach (actually about sixty-four kilometres long) and started into ta creek bed until we reached the sand dunes, where the braver attempted sandboarding (after an intensive minute course on how to do it and all the safety aspects). We spent about twenty minutes there, so everyone who wanted to was able to slide a few times.
We continued our drive along the creek and were quickly onto the Ninety Mile beach. We drove along the beach, pausing at a few places (we saw a little penguin resting on beach, an island with hole in it, many vehicles and the remains of two wrecks) and walking along the beach twice.
There were a lot fishing and a few who were swimming. The drive along the beach was about forty-five minutes and we were off the beach and quickly back to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. We had an ice cream and the driver had to wash the bus to remove salt and sand.
It seemed like a very short time before we were back to Paihai and dropped off at the Bounty Motel. I processed today’s photos, watched the news and then we walked down to the town centre (nearly two hundred metres) for fish (Fran) and chips (me), which we had back at the motel while I uploaded photos and a blog (but I was getting behind already at this stage, so a summary was all I wrote then – I expanded on it a few days later). Quickly it was to sleep (with the iPod to drown out noises for within and without).