This weekend included a trip up the tip of New Zealand past 90 mile beach. Shouldn't it be km, yes, and actually it isn't 90 miles, it's actually 55 miles. If you want the story on the crock that did that then you can read it up for yourself. Being an almost 6 hour drive up to the top, we started our journey Friday afternoon to get a head start, pitching a tent in the mud for the night. 8 of us inside a cute tent for the night and started back up first thing in the morning. Our first actual destination, Te Paki sand dunes to go sandboarding. It's crazy, you're driving and just see beautiful mountains and so much foliage for mountains and out of nowhere appears these giant sand dunes. We rented boards at the bottom and had an interesting walk up to the top. Imagine hiking up a hill and then multiply the difficulty. You look at it and think no problem but man those dunes are challenging to climb but so worth it. After climbing to the top and climbing some more to get to a less scary hill we take the boards and slides ourselves down to the bottom. Was it scary, at first yes because you don't know what to expect going down but as you make your way down it is such a rush and you just can't wait to go again (after dreadfully climbing to the top again.) Image getting to the bottom of a ski hill in the snow and have to make your way back up without a lift. Anywho it was a wonderful view of the ocean to one side at the top and what looked like the Sahara desert (not ever ending) to the other side. The only downfall at the top was how windy it was, eating sand constantly and getting it in your eyes constantly. So if you're ever going to do it, bring a bandanna and goggles. 10/10 would recommend. We then proceeded to make our way to the tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga, which is still 10,463 km from Los Angeles. Crazy.
After an exhausted trip from the two days, some people and myself took another road trip on day 3 to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. Sadly I don't have any photos of inside the caves themselves but in description seeing the glow worms were magical. Walking inside the cave itself was pretty amazing but then you walk down farther into it and get onto a boat and into a dark "room" full of thousands of glow worms. You just stare up into them and honestly it looks like the lights in the great hall from Harry Potter, just floating up there. If you ever get the chance to check it out for yourself, I would say to do it in a heartbeat. On our way home we passed a big bird farm where I saw my first ever ostrich. I made them pull over because I wanted to try to get the ostriches to come close, I succeeded and almost wish I had. They are the most terrifying creatures on the planet. Please enjoy my pathetic photos below. (PS it's a slideshow so click the arrows on the side to view the photos)
