So glad we ignored the weather man!

What a day! Not sure how many blogs I've started with that phrase but wow today was incredible. It didn't start out that way however. We left our site and the rain was already coming down quite hard. As we drove further north it then became torrential. We parked in a town and just sat there wondering what we should actually do. At a time like that you need two things, pie and coffee so Nick ran across to the bakery to get both. He got soaked in the process but it was so worth it. We looked at the weather report and it was still showing as 3 days and nights of continual rain up to 15mm every 2 hours. After much deliberation we came to the conclusion that it was unlikely we'd be up this north again so we should just push on through, keep on going and see how the weather is. It was a mammoth of a drive in total but about an hour later we started to leave the rain clouds and entered glorious sunshine. On the west coast is 90 mile beach and as the name suggests its 90 miles of golden sand that is actually classed as a highway. We are not allowed to drive on it in our rental and I'm sure we wouldn't want to risk it anyway even if we were in the car. We saw a few sand coloured cars and vans driving towards us down the main highway that had clearly given the beach a go. By the time we reached the giant sand dunes at Te Paki at the end of 90 mile beach it was beautifully hot. You wouldn't of even guessed it was raining so badly down south. We changed into shorts and ran towards the sand, New Zealand once again providing something totally different from all we had done before. After climbing up our first dune the scale and vastness became more exposed to us. These things are huge and the whole area was like one giant playground for us to play in. It's only when you photograph someone at the top of one that you manage to capture a bit of perspective on how huge there are. I climbed up one that was so steep and ended up a small speck on the camera 5 minutes later! We ran down a few and captured a hilarious moment where I picked up so much speed I nearly went completely flying forward. Nick managed to crash into me which slowed me down a little but it still took me running about 100m before I could actually stop. I literally couldn't stop laughing and it's probably the most fun I've had since we've been here. I can't imagine how hot this place must be in summer but also how overcrowded. It's one of the main benefits of travelling when we have. After running down our last sand dune we decided to move on hoping we could escape the bad weather a little longer. We drove up to Cape Reinga, the northern most point of the North Island. We now only have to visit the southern most point of this island and we would of done both for each island, if you exclude Stewart Island down the bottom. The point had a cute lighthouse and it was a rather nice walk down to it. Here two oceans meet, the Pacific on the right and the Tasman Sea on the left. It was very cool to see the different currents crashing into each other. The weather held out for us which was awesome and it was hard to get back in the van and head south on the road knowing what weather we would meet. What we didn't expect to come across was a cloud of sand blowing over from the west creating gorgeous and crazy colours in the sky. It was amazing to see and a little intimidating at the same time. We eventually made it to our DOC campsite just as night began to descend. Having gotten stuck yesterday we were worried about parking on the grass so actually parked on the end of the road that lead into the grass area. The rain really started to come down as soon as we arrived. Hopefully it won't be too loud tonight so we get some sleep after such an exciting fun filled day.Read more