Road trip to the north and back

Monday the 16th til Tuesday the 19th: Claudia and me started our New Zealand road trip from Auckland going north to Waipoua Forrest to see the giant and ancient trees. The rain forest is very beautiful and it honored its name, it was quite rainy. But as we drove on to get to our accommodation in Pukemahana, it cleared up again and we enjoyed the drive. On the next day, we went to Cape Reinga, the northern tip of New Zealand. Driving up there, the rain got more intense every minute and the wind picked up too. But hey, we are not made of sugar, so we put our rain clothes on and faced the storm. After 5 minutes I was wet to my undies and my rain jacket was foaming. Looks like the laundry service, I had it cleaned at, didn't do it properly and also didn't renew the rain membrane 😑😑😑. So now I got a rainproof, foaming rain jacket 🤦‍♀️. But Cape Reinga was worth the shower. It kept raining so hard, that at times we had to drive very slowly. Arriving at our coffee break stop in Paihia, it finally stopped and the sun came out. Our accommodation was in Waipu, a camping sight bungalow right next to the beach. On Wednesday we made our way through Auckland down to Katikati on the East coast. An old friend of my father was so nice to offer us accommodation for two nights. The first night Claudia suddenly shouted for me to come out and look at the sky. It was a sea of stars. As the area around Katikati is not densely populated, the night sky is amazing. On Tuesday we drove north to Hahei to do the walk to Cathedral Cove and visit the Hot Water Beach. The walk was wonderful and I would have liked to stay longer at the beach at Cathedral Cove, but we did not have that much time. At Hot Water Beach we had a half-hearted try to find one of the hot water sources under the sand, that could fill up the hole you would dig around it. But we were just too lazy to keep going til we would find the right spot. So we watched the others dig and just chilled on the beach. It was warm enough anyway 😋 On Friday we left for Waitomo.