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Dirty Hippy Backpacker thing

So Noah and I decided that the best way to get out and see New Zealand would be to rent a car and just start truckin'. The day we arrived here we arranged for a car and then luckily we saw a note pinned to a board in our hostel for two canadian girls looking to share the cost of a car with anyone interested. We called them up and by Friday morning our car was chock full of backpacker gear and snacks.

That day we begin our drive northward on the western coast of New Zealand north of Auckland. There isnt much to see except for stunning green pasture land filled with cows and sheep. Now I'm not sure exactly why New Zealand is so beautiful because so many other places have similar features; lush rolling green hills, trees, blue skies,a weaving coastline filled with blue water, and a general lack of development. What I think seperates this place from other places is the clouds. For some reason I think that the clouds here are lower than in other places, which makes them cast interesting shadows on the landscape and create quickly moving contrasts with the sky, and this is what I believe seperates New Zealand from a lot of places (really just a guess). Anyway, as we drove up this coast I really enjoyed the view and the novelty of being a passenger on the left side of car.

Soon enough we had reached the kauri forests in the far north which are famous for their size and for the fact that not many of them exist anymore (I think theyve all been cut down). In this forest, there happens to be the biggest tree I've ever seen. Litteraly the girth of this tree is over 13 meters (well over 40 ft) in diameter, there isnt much else to do there, but the stop is well worth it as the tree is like no other plant ive ever seen.

We journeyed up the coast more and ended up sneaking into a campsite after dark to sleep, because the girls journeying with us assured us that this was the best way to do things. We agreed partly because we felt poor after having to pay in cash for a rental car for a week, but also because we had just bought a cheap 2 man tent for exactly this purpose. As it turns out its an ok way to do  things, but I dont really like the dishonesty of it all, but more on that situation later.

The next day we drove to the furthest north tip to see a lighthouse and the meeting of the tasman and pacific oceans (seas), it was ok, but I was more interested in getting down to the isolated beach nearby. So we drove back south and a few kilometers down the road we ran into a sign that said there was beach access through the cow pastures. After a little encouragement from me, we were tromping through a pasture to what promised to be the most isolated beach I've ever been to. We actually had to walk through some pastures, then into forest over a hill, through dense grasslands, and then over half a mile of dunes, but we got to beach with crystal green water and no one else for miles.

After the beach we headed south again to Waitangi and the bay of islands, and again ran into the problem of housing. The girls we were with said that they would be insulted to pay 14 dollars per person for a campsite and there were litterally no hostel beds available in the entire time (it was waitangi day weekend), so when we got them to agree to pay for a campsite I felt pretty good. As luck would have it, right at that moment some canadian guys pulled up next to us and informed us of a hidden spot very near town that lots of campers pitched tents for free, and that it was pretty easy to find, so we decided that this would be our home for the night.

That night we actually spent a pretty comfortable night on top of hill next to some other backpackers and without any disturbances. we enjoyed the next day, although the tension between us and the girls mounted (I was pretty annoyed with them from the get go for their stinginess and the fact that they acted like 13 year old girls), so Noah and I pretty much stuck with each other. By the end of the day we had actually made friends with the other people sleeping on the top of the hill next to us, and were going to do something that my dad would be pretty mad about:

Tiger (one of the guys sharing the hill with us) who had stayed at this place for quite some time suggested that we go pick mussells off of the rocks near the beach we were at and then cook them up for dinner, so we did. We went over to some rocks litterally 30 meters away and just picked about 40 mussells right off, then we began to cook them while sharing some beer. At this point, I knew that it might not be the best idea to eat mussells that I had picked myself and been cooked by some guy who I didnt know, but I thought that this was part of what its all about: I was dirty (I hadnt taken a shower in four days and had been washing up in the public bathroom at the end of the beach) had been camping illegally, and was now sharing a meal with a guy who for all intents and purposes lived out of a car parked permanantly in a beach parking lot. I'll admit I felt uncomfortable at first, but after a couple rounds of sublime sing alongs and a few beers I decided that even though I didnt feel great about it, this was a neccesary experience. As I told Noah: "we're finally doing the dirty hippy backpacker thing." We cooked the mussells and put them with veggies and tomato sauce on top of pasta, and it ended up being a fantastic dinner, chatted a little bit longer and then walked up the hill to go to bed dirty, tired, and full.

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