Lonely Dinosaur.com: KeriKeri

Here are some photos at the hot beach I forgot to include:

With more hands and shovels we were able to build hot tub walls that could face the barrage of sea water during "low tide"

kind of

Can you dig it?

The fishing pole we brought from Christchurch turned out to be missing the reel handle, which turns out to be important for fishing...who knew? At first we remedied the problem with an Allan Wrench, but seeing as the bait was the size of a normal fish I would catch we had to rethink our reel predicament. Our very courteous hostel owner when asked for suggestions suggested that we use his pole instead. I think it must have also been broken, because we still didn't catch anything.

We ate a feast of braughts, mashed potatoes, and local grilled vegetables as a pot luck among our fellow backpackers

Yet another glorious beach and night sky. I tried very hard to get a picture of the bio luminescence lighting up the waves, but you just have to see it for yourself.

Where 80s polar fleece comes from

Adorably awkward creatures

We met up with Devin and Emily's friend's friends, Richard and Nicky who graciously hosted us for three nights in their beautiful house in Kerikeri. The first day they took us "quadbiking" near 90 mile beach where we sufficiently shredded the gnar, gripped it, shredded it, and broke it (well, one of the bikes). After our long day of quadbiking we watched the movie "Point Break" to brush up on our early 90s surfer colloquisms. The next day we went out on a boating tour of Kerikeri from the bay, and spent an hour lounging in his parents luxurious launch (unfortunately Richard's father is still convelescing from a knee replacement surgery so we couldn't take the big boat out). We supplemented the boat tour with a driving tour of Kerikeri and the surrounding areas and finished off the night with dinner at his parents house. Tomorrow we leave Richard and Nicky for a slow drive back towards Auckland to drop Sam and I off at the airport for our flight to Tonga.