Week 1

My first impressions of Ohope were from a fantastic bird's eye view of the 12km beach, where we're living, as the plane came in to land at the local airport. I liked it already. And felt like a bit of a rockstar as I disembarked the tiny jet with my entourage (19 other members of the general public). So much so infact, that when I was greeted by a gorgeous blonde I expected someone to carry my bags to my limo, and nearly left them behind before I snapped out of my dreamland and chucked my stuff into the back of Natalie's 15yr old, dented (not by her) Toyota Corona.

Our House.

Our View.

Our Car - her good side.

Our first week (together - Nat's already been here for a couple of months) has been relaxed. Managed to fight off the jet lag by building a homemade kite out of a plastic bag, some driftwood and a reel of fishing line. After minutes of careful engineering we took it down to the beach. It was blowing an absolute gale, a nearby kitesurfer was basically flying, surely we couldn't fail? We did. But after a slight modification it took off and we had seconds of fun.

The one that got away - trout 'fishing' in a stream near Lake Waikareiti.

Brrr - there had been a metre of snow here a few days before.

The rest of the week was spent surfing and sleeping (for me anyway, Nat was at work!) and preparing for our 2 day tramping trip over the weekend. On Saturday we drove into Te Urewera National Park and along nearly 100km of dirt tracks (in the same 15yr old, dented Toyota Corona) until we had reached the start of our hike and had terrified each other with tales of psycho touirst-killers. We tramped around Lake Waikareiti through Lord-of-the-Rings-like forest, tried to catch trout with our bare hands, swam in the icy water and slept in a hut on the edge of the lake.

Cooking up some chorizo, chilli & tomato pasta outside the hut.

Waking and warming up with a brew in the morning.

The following day I managed to crack my head on a metal shelf and fall waist deep into a swamp before we had even set off. And all I could think of on the walk back was that these misfortunes usually come in 3's...

They do. But it wasn't until we were driving back that the third one struck, we got a flat tyre. Not usually that bad, unless you're in the middle of a 200,000ha National Park in the rain with no phone signal and the wrong sized spanner for the wheel nuts. We hadn't seen another car for a while so thought the best option would be to ask for help in one of the corrugated iron shacks on the hill side. The only one with signs of life was right at the top, and had smoke coming out of it's make-shift drainpipe chimney (no doubt smoke from the last tourist to ask for help who was now cooking on the fire). If we had been watching ourselves in a horror film we would have been shouting at the screen, but it was our only option.

We walked up the windy track, and fears from the previous day's psycho stories started to manifest themselves. First we came across a line of skulls hanging from a fence and then a dead pig in a wheel barrow. As we approached the house an angry dog started barking and running towards us until it reached the end of its chain. Just before we decided that we'd rather die of starvation in the car, a large Maori man with a glass eye appeared at the door.

He turned out to be very helpful and changed the tyre for us, while a friendly Maori lady and her kids who had been rounding up their cattle came to see what was going on. So all's well that ends well, and we made it back without further incidence. I'm now off to replace the spare tyre incase the same happens next week. We'll keep you posted....