Pakiri Beach

Sean and his partially filled bag of mussels.



I know it's alot of sheep pictures. But, there are alot of sheep here!

08.20.08: In the morning, Muriwai beach was gray and rainy again. Sean woke up early and checked out the beach – stormy seas. So, I didn’t even bother. Although it is a surfable beach, it was obvious there was nothing happening that day. There was only one other family at the campground. They were Kiwi and had two little boys. The father was also taking a year off work to spend time with his kids. They mentioned that the country’s going on 50-something days of consistent rain and it’s the wettest winter they’ve ever had. As a matter of fact, we ended up hearing this from many people. I’m pretty sure all the Kiwis think the island’s going to flood out soon. But, we also hear hopeful news that the wet spell should be ending soon.

Even though we really didn’t do anything, going to Muriwai still had it’s benefits. While we were leaving, we saw another surf shop called Hardcore in the nearby wine region of Kumeu. They even sold surfboard blanks for shapers. Bryan not only gave us a great deal on a 7’6” board that would do us just fine (mass-manufactured in Thailand, not hand shaped), but he threw-in a bunch of extras like fins, wax, a loaner copy of the New Zealand Surf Guide and an offer to buy back the board when we’re done. True New Zealand hospitality at it’s finest! Also in Kumeu, I stopped by a store called Green Grocers, a natural foods store. They seemed to sell mostly gluten-free packaged foods, no fresh produce, which I could have used. But I got some rice and quinoa pasta, sauce and some Ecover biodegradable dish soap. It’s good to see at least there were stores like this in operation. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to try any of Kumeu’s wines. But hopefully, we will when we come back to return the book and sell back the board. I like what Bryan had to say about the local wineries, “If you own land here, what else are you going to do with it besides have sheep or grow grapes?”

From there, we headed about an hour and a half further north and back to the East coast towards Goat Island. We were heading further out of the Auckland area and more into green rolling hills with mostly sheep and some cows grazing. From there on out, the “freeway” turned into a two lane road going through the hills, sometimes becoming the main road of a town, and every once in a while, it would go through mountainous forest.

Unfortunately, the campground we were heading to at Goat Island was closed for the season. It would have been great to stay in that area. Consequently, there were no goats. But, the waters between mainland and the island were sooo blue and clear that snorkeling is offered there. Anyway, we had nothing to do but head further north where we found a campground at Pakiri beach. It wasn’t too far from Goat Island and just as nice. Besides one other guy who consequently was also from The States, we were the only camper there again. That night, we ate one of several heat-and-eat packets of Pitango organic soups/risotto (Tomato Soup, Vegetable Minestrone and Carrot, Leek and Spinich Risotto) that I got from New World at the mall. They aren’t half bad and fit into our tiny fridge quite nicely. If we find more, I’m sure we’ll be stocking up on more.

The next day, Sean woke up early and tried his hand at fishing while I slept in. I guess I was still catching up on sleep after waking up early so many times in Australia, something he doesn’t seem to need as much as I do. After he came back empty-handed, we all ventured to the beach. Sean talked to one of the guys who worked at the campground and got a tip that there are some mussels growing on the rocks between Pakiri Beach and Goat Island, a 20 minute walk down the sand. It took some foraging, but we finally found those Green Lipped beauties, along with one sole clam that I found. With a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from New World on hand, we steamed them in that, along with a bit of butter and lemon juice. Boy was dinner great that night!

The next morning, we packed up and hit the road. We were out of Sauv (what the Kiwi’s call it) and just in case we ran into more mussels, we decided to stop by the Matakana wine region on the way towards the highway for another bottle. We ended up at Ascension Winery, which also had a café. So, we did some tasting and then had a great lunch: oysters on the half shell, squid fritters (essentially like crab cakes, but cut-up squid instead of crab) and a bowl of chunky split pea soup. Meanwhile, Kailani, who would normally be a terror in a tasting room, was able to play with the toys in their kid’s play room. It was great that we picked a place that proclaims to be a family winery! With a bottle of dry, crisp Voigner for mussels and some Holy Cow Waiheke Island Merlot Malbec for drinking, we hit the road again.

We actually didn’t make it that far. Just down the road from Matakana was a place called Sheep World. Just as the name suggests, it’s kind of a cheesy theme park dedicated to sheep. But, I figured that Kai likes to see animals and she was a trooper at the winery, so this stop was for her. We made it in time for their daily sheep show. And again, because it was off-season, there was only one other family attending. The guy that ran the show basically showed us what they do at a sheep farm, how they use the dogs to herd them and demonstrated how you sheer a sheep. Sean volunteered to “sex” the sheep. No, it’s not what it sounds like! Each sheep was marked a different color (on a real farm, their ears would be clipped to indicate their sex) and he had to put each sheep into their appropriate pen as they came at him: pink are girls, blue are boys and no color indicated a hermaphrodite. I got picked for the sheep shearing demonstration. The sheering tool was essentially a really burly hair clipper. So, after 12 years hairdressing, it didn’t feel all too different, except I had to hold down a sheep with a dense afro. I’m sure that the last part of the show was Kailani’s favorite. We were able to feed the lambs (baby sheep) with milk bottles. Since there were so few of us, we were able to feed two rounds of lambs. Both times, the youngest lamb of the bunch went to Kailani, who was also the youngest human of the bunch. After the show, we took a bag of feed out to the farm, and visited all the other animals: alpaca, pigs, goats, chicken, donkeys, etc.

We hit the road again, this time to find one more place to stop at, the town of Wellsford. This time, it was a shorter stopover. We just needed some groceries. I was pretty stoked to find an organic butcher. I’m not sure why it was named Tidal Flow, considering they only sold chicken, pork and beef. But, we did pick up some awesome Scotch Filet steak and sausages. Luckily, the campervan has a freezer within the fridge. So, we were able to keep it in there until we were ready to eat it. Also next door was a Four Square market. This chain seems to be the standard in smaller towns.* There was only one package in stock, but I got some Naked Naturals Chunky Thai Satay sauce that ended up being a great compliment to our leftover roasted chicken. We spread this in lieu of mayonnaise (we didn’t have any) for chicken sandwiches as well as on crackers, again with leftover chicken, and both were quite yummy.

* In larger areas, you can find a New World and in medium populated areas, you usually find a Pac-n-Save, which seems to be the same as the chain in The States. Both Pac-n-Save and New World are owned by the same company.