No Shoes
Sarah says:
Following our stay in Taupo we were planning to head straight across to a coastal town called Gisborne but realized the drive would be longer for one day than we wanted. We decided to break it up by heading north a bit and following the coast road all the way around - this was turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve made so far and not only because Gisborne turned out to be a shitty little town. Anyway, we headed for a little beach town called Opotiki and stayed at a kind of beach shack backpackers. We pulled up to the place and it’s this little bungalow on maybe a half acre of land RIGHT on the beach. The house is surrounded by these amazing tropical flowers and the beach is empty and gorgeous. The house didn’t look like much from the outside but it took about 2 seconds once inside to see that it was about perfect. The owner was this super tan Kiwi guy who, I’m sure, hasn’t seen a pair of shoes in decades. The place is small - can maybe sleep 15 - and it was nearly empty so we had everything kind of to ourselves. All the rooms opened up to the beach and he had 2 great massive decks and a bbq - it was just awesome. We took two of his boogie boards and, at like 5:00pm, headed to the beach for a swim. The water was like bathwater - I mean it was the most gorgeous ocean water we’ve been in so far. I could hear David over there taking waves in screaming “woohoooooooo” all the way. You really couldn’t have asked for a more perfect place. So we sat on the deck with a bottle of wine contemplating if we could ever give everything up and just buy some shack on the beach and never have to wear shoes again. Something to think about for sure.
We had one more perfect night like that. The owner of that place, Steve, suggested we stay at his mate’s place the next night. The next beach town was called Tokomura Bay and was about 3 hours down the road. Same thing: little house, no worries, no shoes. We met a guy from Ireland and a guy from the Netherlands and went down the pub with them - please see David’s entry on our first Maori encounter. Anyway, good on us for taking the longer way around as I would definately count those nights as highlights.
We do have pictures and we’ll be uploading a batch when we get to Wellington in the next couple days. Sorry for the delay. It’s not always easy to find a place that can do it and everything - well just about everything - closes at 5:00pm in NZ which has made coming to internet cafes a bit tricky sometimes.
Take care and we’ll chat again soon!
Don’t forget to check out our first gallery and our second gallery and all our extreme sports mad stuff.
January 31st, 2005 at 7:47 am
Hi Guys
Good to see you are still having a good time and enjoying yourselves. The extreme sports look like fun and definatley worth doing, at least you can say you have done something with your life and you wont have any regrets. Mum said you will be moving to a house soon for a few weeks, good luck!
Michelle