pakiri beach horse trek & kauris

Guess what we did on our way to the horse trek? That’s right, we got lost! Yeah, we’re kind of used to that by now. So anyway, we got there half an hour late. We had a great time on the trek - just two minutes into it, our horses swam across a river, then we headed to the beach, and went for a leisurely ride along the surf. On the way back, we wound through the dunes, and Ann and I and one other woman went with one of the guides to do some cantering and galloping, while the rest kept to a slower pace on a shorter trail, and we met back up near the end.

Ann’s mother called us last night when we were on our way to Whangarei and she was at the Auckland airport ready to fly back home, and recommended the Kauri Museum in Matakohe, so we backtracked an hour or so to visit it this afternoon. The museum was really impressive, with very interesting exhibits including a full-scale model of a Kauri sawmill. We got a little overloaded halfway through, and decided to leave, but couldn’t because we kept stopping to look at interesting stuff along the way! The Kauri trees were amazingly large, and the amber room, full of petrified Kauri gum, was equally astounding – there were even pieces with whole geckos and frogs preserved in them!

We picked up a quick dinner on our way to the hostel, then unpacked the entire car into the living room of the 2-bedroom suite…and, of course, the woman staying in the other bedroom arrived at the peak of the mess! We did manage to sort out everything that belonged to Ann, and even managed to get everything of mine to fit back in the car. I burned some photo and music CDs for Ann, and then we went to sleep early-ish so Ann could get a couple of hours in before her 5:15 airport shuttle.