The journey continues

As previously announced, we had planned a 2-day surf course in Raglan, the surfers' mecca in New Zealand. However, we did not book this course at one of the big surf schools in the city, but rather privately with an individual surf instructor. Accordingly, it was 'familiar' when we arrived at our instructor's house around noon and watched a surf film in his living room. At first glance, the man also appeared a bit unconventional to us, and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Fortunately, this concern soon turned out to be unfounded. Since we were also there outside the high season, we were fortunate to have him all to ourselves and essentially received private lessons. After trying on our wetsuits, we headed to the beach and started with the first dry exercises. Shortly afterwards, we ventured into the freezing water and started our first attempts to stand on the surfboard. Surprisingly, it didn't take long for both of us to be able to stand on our boards, and even though Toni seemed to be more talented, we both had a lot of fun. Because our teacher Steve could focus individually on both of us, we were actually able to learn a lot. After several hours in the water, we were quite exhausted and relieved that our course for the day was over. We spent our evening on a rather Spartan campsite above the city, which, however, offered a beautiful view of the bay. Our second day of surfing was similar to the first, and we had the opportunity to practice some more. We ended our course in the evening with fish and chips and were already dreading the muscle soreness of the next few days.

Due to our tight schedule, we continued the following day towards Northland. Our first destinations there were the huge Kauri trees, which can mainly be found in the far north. Before the European settlers arrived in New Zealand, there were countless of these trees, but due to massive deforestation, only a few of these giants remain today, and they are protected by large cleaning stations for shoes and equipment to prevent the spread of diseases. So we visited some of these impressive trees, including the largest Kauri tree, Tane Mahuta, which is estimated to be over 2000 years old. After a long day with several hours of driving, we were looking forward to our stay at the selected campsite. The only problem was that the access to the toilet was on the other side of a flooded river, and we didn't dare to cross it in the dark. Fortunately, we were able to overcome the obstacle the next morning with our rubber boots. Our journey then continued further north to the largest sand dunes in New Zealand. Here, we marched up and down the dunes and almost felt like we were in the desert due to the amount of sand. Our next destination was Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of our New Zealand trip. On this land tip, you can see beautiful bays, a nice lighthouse, and the impressive collision of two oceans. We spent the following night at a very nice and very basic campsite on the beach just a few kilometers from Cape Reinga. This would be the last night we would spend in the car for a few days, as the next day we would go wwoofing again for a few days. And overall, our journey was slowly coming to an end, and we had only about a month left in New Zealand...