Waiwera

Happy Birthday Mom! Wish I was home to celebrate! Or you were here!

Today was another beautiful day with temps in the high 70s, sun, and a nice breeze. We headed south and stopped at some amazing sand dunes and did something called sandboarding - you take a boogie board down a sand dune 100 ft high and ride it all the way into the water. Can't put pictures up on this computer but it was awesome.

Next we saw some kauri trees which are extremely wide but also extremely short, so they're really an awesome sight too. We're in more of a subtropical climate zone now so the plant life is really amazing and diverse.

After seeing the trees we got in a 40km ride on EXTREMELY hilly roads. It was like doing Mt. Ventoux, only with a heavy mountain bike.

I also meant to mention yesterday that I got to watch some tv which was interesting. I watched the NZ news broadcast. No stories about murders or robberies, and they actually spent close to 5 minutes talking about this chicken that someone bought for christmas that still had digested food inside it. Other than that, tourist accidents seem to be farely common, probably because of the amount of tourism and the stupidity of some tourists. Two men were killed when ice fell on them at Fox Glacier. They had crossed a warning sign. There's a big controversy about it because the rental car company wanted the family to pay for the towing of their car (the keys were stuck under the ice). This had really been the dominant news story for the last few days.

It seems like Kiwis don't much like to get involved in foreign affairs and really prefer to just have a laid-back lifestyle by themselves. Still, there's a lot of US news in the newspapers and on tv.

Time's out, so I've got to run! Tomorrow I spend the day in Auckland getting ready to head south. I'm staying at the same hostel I stayed at for the beginning of the trip.

-Brian