The highlights of the past week are as follows: Oren turned into a sperm whale while diving in Tutukaka in 15 degrees. Meanwhile I went on a private Maori tour where I learned a bit about the history, traditions and edible plants. My guides Eva and Gloria were extremely funny and we had a really good time, so that no one paid attention to the watch. My tour ended up being 4 hours long instead of 2.5.
In Paihia we went on a boat trip hoping to be lucky and see some dolphins - potentially even swim with them.
All that happened was that Oren was attacked by vicious sea gulls and I spent most of the time outside in the back of the boat, filling up one paper bag after the other with my breakfast and yesterday's green lipped mussels. (Sorry for the details, but it was a traumatic experience. Unfortunately, Oren was too busy replacing my bags and there are no 'action' pictures...).As a compensation for the unsuccessful dolphin trip we treated ourselves to excellent burgers (a DUDE burger and a Rasta Vege) in the evening accompanied by some good live music.
The next day we visited the birth place of modern NZ: the Treaty House at Waitangi. We had an interesting tour of the place where the treaty between the Maori chiefs and the Brits was signed.
Most of yesterday was spent on the road towards Coromandel which took us around 7 hours. On
the way we had to readjust our personal record books: last year we went to Gilroy in California which is famous for garlic. We then decided that this is the oddest thing a town can be famous for. Enter Kawakaka. It hosts toilets created by the famous Austrian architect Friedrich Hundertwasser. Now that is even weirder.
On the topic of weird attractions, we are now in Hot Water Beach where you can dig your own jaccuzzi during low tide. As soon as we arrived, we packed the shovel and went down to the beach where many people were already boiling like shrimp. No one cared it kept raining all the time.
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