The most beautiful place in the world - so far (10/25/16)

The second day of our road trip started in the rainy parking lot in Kaikohe. We ate the canned rice pudding we had bought the day before, which didn't taste very good and later made me feel a little sick during the car ride. After this breakfast, we set off on the long journey to the northern tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga. Unfortunately, we drove 40 km in the completely wrong direction first (we can't explain why none of us noticed earlier that Cape Reinga was no longer signposted), which meant that we were on the road for a total of six hours and I admired Jana's driving skills even more. Because of my lack of driver's license, she had to drive the whole road trip without relief, which definitely deserves praise.

Finally, when we arrived up there, we quickly realized that this long journey was really worth it. The view from the top of a mountain over the two meeting seas was truly breathtakingly beautiful. Juicy green grass, the turquoise turning into dark blue sea, and the beige-white sand dunes made this view perfect. Despite the wind, it was so warm and sunny that we could enjoy the view of the sea at the top. It almost felt like standing at the top of the world when looking at the two seas and the horizon from the mountain. We took advantage of this fantastic landscape to take a lot of photos and then walked a short way down to a lighthouse where we paused for a moment.

At some point, we decided to leave this impressive place and only drove a few kilometers further to a campsite at Tapotupotu Bay. Here, you could sleep in a tent or a car right on the beach, which was in the middle of nowhere. We sat in front of the Pacific Ocean and ate the more or less delicious cold canned spaghetti (honestly, we started to doubt if a gas cooker wouldn't have been handy). After this not really balanced dinner, we took photos on the beach because we simply had to capture the ambiance (volcanic landscape, mountains, forest, the sea).

Filled with all the overwhelming moments we experienced that day, we went to sleep in our car, almost routine by now, after an ice-cold rainwater shower - and "ice-cold" is really not an exaggeration.

Jasmin