Sunday, June 10, 2012

NZ Adventures 5: Waihi

The Monday after arriving, we were off for more adventures.

It started off, of course, with all six of us sharing the bathroom to get ready. This worked quite well, actually, as the shower and the toilet each had their own room, so we could all do various getting ready activities at the same time.

Here’s the power plug from the bathroom. It even had it’s own on/off switch.

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Dan came back that afternoon and then it was time to call the insurance and have me put on as a driver – a fun and exciting thought!

The first thing I noticed in driving was this sticker on the dash. Obviously Jucy rental company gets plenty of foreign renters.

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The fun thing about the car, from this strangely named rental company was that all the locals seemed to think we were selling juice. We got asked a few times about what kind of juice we sold and who we sold to. (Photo taken by Dolly).

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We headed to friends of some of our party’s house. I didn’t take many pictures since I was driving, but we drove though the beautiful Karangahake Gorge. The drive was super curvy, and I was really glad I was driving. Before the end of the gorge, we turned off for the friend’s house.

When we arrived we found that they had a pukeko statue in their front lawn. This was exciting because we were staying at Pukeko Lodge and it was the “first” one we had seen close enough to get a decent picture of.

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At the friend’s house, I got my second serving of my new favorite food, slice.

After the friend’s house, we decided that since we had already come most of the way, we should go out to the Waihi beach before the sunset. We got there just in time!

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I loved the shape of this tree.

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Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the island to watch the sunset, but we did manage to see a glorious un-sunset.

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Once the sun was mostly down, we headed back to Paeroa. We decided to eat in town and ended up back at the same café we had been to the day before.

I got quiche and . . .

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. . . slice. Was there really any other option? The bottom layer was chocolate and coconut, the middle was caramel and the top was chocolate. It was kinda like a Samoas Girl Scout Cookie.

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After dinner, we headed home and played Skip-Bo.