One night in Whangarei

A motto of the New Zealanders that you hear every day and everywhere is: 'No worries' - no worries! It seems that you can rely on everything working out somehow and everything turning out fine.

Being adaptable and flexible as we are, we have immediately implemented this motto into our thinking algorithms and have set off from Auckland towards Whangarei without making a reservation at a campsite. According to the friendly manager of our hostel in Auckland (Freemans Backpackers Lodge, highly recommended), it's only a short 1.5-hour drive there.

After 1.5 hours of driving, the navigation system shows: Remaining time: 80 minutes. But not bad estimation, Seema! Since we are leaving around 6 p.m. due to applying for the tax number and running last-minute errands for camping, it is already dark when we still have about 90 kilometers ahead of us. And it's raining. A lot! Usually, you can expect about 5 minutes of rain followed by sunshine, but this time the rain is more like a shower from a fire hose that doesn't seem to stop.

As if we weren't tired enough already, we also have to find somewhere to get gas for our camping stove so that we can at least have a little something to eat. But the motto 'No worries' is definitely not applicable here. Try to find gas in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand at 8 p.m. during the week. The answers from the gas station owners are always the same: 'I think the next gas station might fill it up, just 10 miles in this direction.' When we arrive there, it's back to 'Can't do that, but I think the next one can.' or 'Not at this time, sorry' or simply 'Too late'. Great! Looks like our dinner will once again consist of untoasted toast with Nutella...

We have given up hope of finding gas by now, but we definitely need a place to sleep! We have checked out a campground in the northwest of Whangarei and even manage to find it (almost) right away. However, it is... guess what? Closed!

We continue driving and find another campground. It's supposed to be a bit more expensive, but the main thing is that we have a site at all. Oh, also closed?! Oh great. It seems that some campgrounds only open in the main season in December...

After a few kilometers, our eyes finally spot another campground. Hey, there's still light! We park in the visitor parking lot and want to go to the reception, but... closed. However, there is a kind of lounge area on the campground where there even seem to be people, let's see. Actually! It turns out that these people are even from Germany, so we can explain our situation (just wanting to sleep somewhere) quite well. However, the guys tell us that the manager is already asleep and everything here always closes at 7 p.m. Good to know, at around 10 p.m... We have to admit that we messed up the planning this time and we realize that this night won't be very comfortable as we have not yet set up our 'bed', consisting of a mattress supported by empty buckets and crates, with pillows to cushion the corners and edges, and now it is too dark and raining too heavily...

So we just stay on the parking lot in front of the reception and try to make ourselves 'comfortable' on the driver's and passenger's seats. However, we can hardly sleep because:

1. The front seats are simply uncomfortable

2. We can't really recline the seats because the car is so packed

3. It's damn cold! I thought it's summer now??

4. We are afraid that in the middle of the night the manager of the place will bang on the window with a scary illuminated face and ask why we are sleeping here (who wouldn't be scared to death?)

Therefore, the plan is to drive on at 6 a.m. to avoid being discovered.

After nearly 8 hours (maybe 4 hours of sleep), it's time: we wake up at 6 a.m. and quickly make our way unnoticed to another, slightly more remote parking lot to doze off for another 2 hours... That was probably the first time on this day that the motto with 'No worries' worked out more or less (we weren't discovered!), otherwise everything seemed to have gone wrong that could go wrong... well, we are healthy and the car is running, so everything is actually fine! :)

Unrested and unwashed, we then head to our actual destination in Whangarei in the morning: the Whangarei Falls! And it's worth it. So much! The Whangarei Falls plunge about 26 meters deep in the midst of a rather flat landscape. And while at the upper end of the waterfall there is rather a normal meadow with few trees, at the foot of the waterfall there is simply jungle. Ferns, palm trees, densely overgrown trees and bushes everywhere, and lots of water dripping from the leaves. In addition, there are exotic bird calls...

The ongoing rain even has something good here: It's totally empty! In summer, you can hardly enjoy nature here, but now we are almost the only ones here. We would prefer not to leave...