The following day we made our way to the west coast of New Zealand where we would spend the next two nights in Ahipara, a cute little town on 90 mile beach. Our cottage had an amazing view that made even doing the dishes a pleasure! We played some rugby (read American football with a rugby) on the beach and Justin even caught a few waves. We made pad thai for dinner and caught the All Blacks game.
Click
here if you would like to see a little video of 3 Americans playing rugby on a beach in New Zealand.
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| View from our cottage in Ahipara |
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| Our boys playing rugby on 90 mile beach |
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| 90 mile beach in HDR |
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| Hood-rat SN |
The next morning we set out early for our trip up to the far north tip of New Zealand at Cape Reinga. Our first stop was Rarawa Beach. This time we got to enjoy the amazing white sand without millions of bugs and we saw a brilliant rainbow that caused our men to frolic underneath it! We were chased away from the beach by a brief rain shower but made it to the car relatively dry.
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| Couple shot |
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| Frolicking.... |
Next stop, sand boarding at the sand dunes. We had a blast sliding down the dunes like kids and Sarah declared the moment her favorite of the trip. We saw another beautiful rainbow at the dunes and stopped for various photo ops with sheep and cows along the drive back to the main road.
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| This little guy posed just for us |
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| Car as a tripod group shot before we headed out for sandboarding |
After a picnic lunch, we drove up to Cape Reinga where we had the place to ourselves! It was quite a contrast to the busy Easter weekend of our last visit. We got some great photos without other tourists getting in the way. The Cape is one of my favorite spots in New Zealand and I really enjoyed getting to share my second trip with two of my best friends!
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| Love this view! |
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| The light house at Cape Reinga |
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| The only other tourists in the area took our photo |
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| Which way to Dallas? |
1 comments:
I think you are halfway correct on the ball game. Your video showed me it was closer to rugby simply because all of you were terrible in throwing it. No scrums, though. BTW, scum is also now a word as part of Agile project management.
I like your HDR shot.
One shot reminds me of that famous song "Fro-lick-ing near a rainbow in N.Z." Be sure to use the Somewhere Over the Rainbow tune.
In the photo with the sign, I thought J was just sticking his finger in your ear until I realized y'all were pointing trying to figure out which way to Big D.