And there was joy, love and happiness

My first weekend here I went on my Famil trip with Stray. Holly put me on the TOM pass which meant that I was going to see a large part of the north island. Saturday morning the bus picked me up at the hostel where I was staying. Gollom was going to be my driver for the next days and everybody told me that he, for sure, was going to take good care of me. Remember, I will refer to this sentence later.

So, I left on the 3rd of July on my way to Hahei. A small town on the east coast of NZ. Some of you may not be aware of the fact that it is winter down here, so we where really fortunate to have such beautiful weather. This was the first time since I arrived here that I actually left Auckland. It amazed me that within thirty minutes you have a completely different landscape. No skyscrapers or endless neighbourhoods with one house after the other. It looks green out there, even in winter, with hills and small towns popping up once in a while. We drove east, stopped in Thames to do some grocery shopping, and continued our way through the Coromandel Forest Park. Somewhere, on our way to Hahei, we stopped to enjoy this amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. This was my first time to see this beautiful blue endless reaching surface on a incredible day. My holiday started here. All the pressure from the last months was falling of my shoulders and it was the first time I realized I was in NZ, I was on the other end of the world no chance of going any further. In Hahei an astonishing kayak tour was waiting for us (with a really good looking guide). We went to Cathedral Cove where we had a lovely cappuccino (made by our lovely guide). Even if it is winter around here it felt like summer. Board short, t-shirt, flip flops. Life is beautiful.

This evening we stayed at the Hahai Holiday Park, a camping which had some lodges as well. Gollom made us a great barbeque dinner which made me feel so unbelievable tired, as my jet leg was still holding on to me, that I (boring me) went to sleep very early. Although, this resulted in a very early wake up where I had to force myself to go back to sleep. At 8AM we were all back in the bus ready to go to our next destination. Raglan.