Parting Ways in Search of Sunshine

Wednesday 24 September

The rain didn’t stop and we had the worst night of sleep because of giant rain torpedoes hitting the roof from the tree overhead - but the wind died down a tad, enough for us to pack up and hit the road.

Abby & Jez went north to explore Doubtless Bay and maybe onto Pukenui and Cape Reinga. We went south through Hundertwasser country - Kawakawa public toilets and then the Art Centre in Whangārei - on to Uretiti Beach DOC camp near Waipu. It was pretty gnarly along the way, with heaps of water on the roads and flooding the streams and rivers, and quite a few fields. There were some pretty major roadworks too and our lovely clean(ish) van got pretty filthy - not happy!

We'd booked Uretiti partly because it looked lovely, but partly to use our DOC pass which we paid around $350 for in January, anticipating we would be using way more than that amount in DOC camps - but we had only used $70 to date! This was we added another $72 to the spend, but we still have a way to go to break even, let alone start saving money!!!

We set up by the hot showers block and levelled ourselves out on the bumpy ground, then wandered off to explore the beach (wrapped up to the nines as it was cloudy, damp and windy!

Back at Banjo I rustled up Mexican tortillas with my Black Box sachet of Maggi nacho powder - yum! Spent the evening catching up on old episodes of Only Murders in the Building - even better on second viewing!