The Great North...

In addition to indulging in KFC, we did a few other things while north of Auckland. We took a bus tour of Ninety Mile Beach and the surrounding sand dunes. Of course, the tour began with a pit stop at a gift shop & museum of sorts. In Northern New Zealand they are essentially mining for trees. Large kauri trees were buried during a series of tsunamis thousands of years ago. The locals have been digging them up for years. They make all sorts of things from the wood...
such as exciting staircases to nowhere...
and fabulous thrones...And chopsticks...which we purchased. Now that we own 45,000 year old chopsticks...who wants to come over for dinner?

Unfortunately that last picture proved too fabulous for the camera :( When we got back onto the bus, the LCD screen was broken. I honestly have NO idea how it happened. I didn't drop it or get it wet...nothing. And since the camera doesn't even have a peep hole to look through we just had to literally point and shoot and hope for the best. Not cool. Not cool at all. So if the pics in this & subsequent posts seem a little off, it's because we couldn't see what we were doing when we took the pictures....ugh

Anyways, the next stop on the tour was a pretty unimpressive lighthouse. The locals made it sound like it would be the highlight of the trip. I guess when you've lived in Michigan & Boston you get a chance to see some pretty cool lighthouses. It just seemed so little... Thankfully, the scenery made up for man's shortcomings...For me, the real highlight was sandboarding. They handed out sleds and we marched up the (hot!) sand dune.. Sliding down was fun but not quite as fast as I was expecting. Here I am on my way down the dune...I'm the closest to the top... Once again, crazy children appeared to have the most fun as they flew down the dune. I guess being lighter let them get more speed. Every now and then someone would lose control and tumble down the hill leaving a cloud of sand in their wake. I didn't fall or tumble but I still had sand everywhere, so I can't imagine what kind of demons these people had to deal with when they got home...

Throughout the day our guide kept telling us that we had to stay on schedule because the tide was coming in and we still had to drive down Ninety Mile Beach. The beach doubles as a road...think Daytona Beach, but without all the people and buildings. As we were speeding down the beach to beat the tide, our driver pointed out some cars that weren't so lucky. Apparently a year ago a family had a fun day of relaxing and picnicking on the beach. Well, they didn't get off the beach fast enough and the tide ate their cars. Luckily everyone was OK, but losing 2 cars in one day is no way to end your vacation!!!

If you look to the right of the bus you can see car #1's steering wheel sticking out of the sand...

Car #2 did not fare much better...
:) Ryan