bwahahaha! wouldn’t you like to know!!!
today i am almost annoyed. i just developed two of my camera and the quality is apalling. godrotting cheap newzealand crap. i will try and send the lot today. don’t expect much in the way of a letter i am afraid.
liv: annika claims that she will be working hard wilst i am sunning myself in thailand, but i suspect a falsehood. why is there no more story? what wrong with you guys?
right this is going to be long so i will have to condence i am afraid.
annika would quit work on saturday and as i had already quit i was to make arangements for a tour to nintey mile beach for that day. the day before i checked the weather online and it looked bad, also it occured to me that she might reqire a day of rest from the strain of toil. so i didn’t book the tour. saturday was lovly and warm. most plesent for a day at the beach. curses. we had a plesent day anyway, lolling about, e-mailing/blogging and going to our habitual hount-the supermarket. in fact there was a running joke that whenever we went to town we would always come back laden with goods costing no less then forty dollors, and that i had an obsesive compulsion to visit this “new world” supermarket. this was true. any way we booked it for the day after, and luckily this was also a nice day, but not quite as nice as the day before. i apear to be rambling… so the bus picked us up at 8.15 and we were away. the tour was nice, we drove along the nintye mile beach, stopping for photo opotunitys and stuff and lisited the lighthouse. but the problem with these tours is there is a time limit, so we found ourselve rushing, wich was annoying as it would have been nice to linger. all in all a fun day. on the way back we stopped at a fish and chip shop that claimed to be the best in newzealand. not bad, but i have had better. in newzealand that is, the fish and chips in england is foul. that night we packed and planned our departure for the next day. this was the plan: annika and i would hitchhike to opanoni, a place near the kouri forrest, stay for a few days,check out the forrest, then head to auckland, sort some stuff out then on to coromandel(hot water beach!!!) then see what happens. packing my bag after such a long time in one place was strange, i wanted to stay for ever. the next morning we maid our teafull good byes to guto brazil, hanit isreal, and ofcourse christian, carolin and dipti. we shoulod see the triumverate again in coromandel, though maybe not christian as he has fallen in love with a nice japanese girl called mika, and he may travel with her now. shane gave us a lift to the main road and we settled down and began the strange practice nown as hitching. this is done by standing as close to the road as possibly, while not actually being run opver but forcing them to deveate around you. then you extend a hand thumbs up and grin at passing cars like a crazy person. annika did it diferently but that was my technique. we took it in turns and waited for maybe ten minutes before some sort of van hoved into view and stopped. the guy was going to whakablah or something a three house town on the way so we hopped in. he was nice and looked like a moiri verson of farmer giles, byus we talked it turn out that he was a multi millionare and the biggest horse trader in newzealand. he owned vast tracks of land which he pointed out to us as we drove and no less than five mecedes! i lapped all this up readily but annika was more sceptical. what we do know for certain is that he owns two horses and maybe one merc, as he showed us a picture of him standing next to one, and we visited two of his horses. he dropped us of at the town and we started hitching again. this time i took a lot longer. the was maybe a car every ten minutes and they didn’t seem to want to pick us up. i checked out the town and it hadf a backpackers so we were ok on that front, but there were very few buses going out. after much waiting a car stopped and the chap said he was goin to opanoni. result! he was also nice and friendly but not a millionare. the drive was very scenic, but mared by the fact that i had to rack my brains for something to say. this is alway the way, you are just one step away from an uncomfortable silence. he dropped us of at the backpackers in opononi. very nice place and almost empty. our stay in opanoni was exceedingly plesent we went for walks, hitching somtimes wen it was a long way a way. and sat on the beach, which was right oposite our hostel, and ate the tastiest fried chicken in the world in the moonlight with the waves lapping at our feet. ahhhh. one day we decided to hitch to the kouri forest and back. about 30km(sorry dod-thats six bushels or forty seven rope lengths in old money.) away. we tried to set of early, but it is quite tricky with someone who takes forty minutes to slice pairs into her musili, which incedentaly must contain NO raisans. so we set of at about11.00 and walked the (thats not true!!! hes lying,it only takes me 2 minutes to prepare my muesli!!!!!!!!!!!)-julio returned to typing nursing a bruised shoulder- my mistake. obviously. eleven exclemation marks, a sure sign of madness. i have to stoip now will blog later.
julio