Finally Exploring the North Island.

You'd think, having been in the country more than a year, that we'd have become experts of at least the north island by now? You'd think... But in actuality, other then a few road trips with friends and family (Napier, Hamilton and Pauanui) we really haven't gone off roadtripping.

First, I've got to say, I love road trips. I love driving, winging it and seeing parts of the country you don't see from a plane.

Our plan was fairly simple. Carly got back from a Montessori conference on Tuesday, we leave Tuesday night with an eventual goal of getting to Raglan. Known for its surfing since at least the 60's (there's a famous american surf movie called The Endless Summer that is filmed in part there) and in recent times has become a Kitesurfing destination as well: It's got a strong outgoing tide current that makes for smooth flat water and some fast riding. In fact, one of the large Kite / Parasail manufacturers, Ozone, moved their offices from France to Raglan.

We didn't really have any other plans. We wanted to make it somewhere that had diving for Carly and see parts of the country we'd missed throughout our travels.

Fate had a slightly different plan for us though. BEE, our trusty Legacy, had been having a bit of a bad month, having had a failed MAF and an alternator on the fritz. I'd just finished replacing the alternator when I lightly scraped the front tire on Tuesday morning. With a loud hiss, the sidewall of the tire cracked open. As I was on my way to the Kapiti coast with my friend R. (who was already in the car) we decided to deal with it on Wednesday, delaying our departure.

Tuesday night we also discovered that our dryer had kicked the can, with a full load of wet laundry in it. Not an auspicious beginning to our trip!

Wednesday morning, we slapped the spare on the car, drove to Petone where Carly had found a laundry and I knew of a tireshop with a quick turnaround. By 12:30 we were packed and on the road!

Our first stop was Foxton Beach. I'd had a few adventures trying to Kite there before, but this was the day. A beautiful 20 knot NW wind was blowing through a huge river mouth with flat water, good company (I was kiting with The Wind Warrior and a friend of his) and a beautiful sun. We kited until sundown, packed up and headed back to The Wind Warrior's place for coffee and a bit of a social call.

We hit the road around 7, shooting to get to New Plymouth, find a campsite or holiday park and spend the night. TWW had mentioned that the Women’s Surf Festival and ASP Dream Tour was being hosted there and it would be worth the trip to check out some of the action. What we didn't immediately realize was this would mean there'd be 0 vacancies at any of the parks, motels or hotels.

about an hour and a 1/2 before we arrived in New Plymouth we started trying to find a room. No luck. Once we got to the city, we decided that since we had some camping gear in the car, we might as well find a quiet corner and do some real "car camping". So we pulled into the parking lot for Fitzroy Harbour around 10:30 and, re-arranging our baggage, dropped our sleeping bags in the back of the wagon and slept relatively well! Next time we do this we'll make sure to put the kitesurfing boards on the roof, but really, it's about 6 feet long, perfectly flat, and, with an air mattress and sleeping back, was better then expected!

The next morning, after exploring New Plymouth, we decided to go check out some of the surfing action:

To be continued...