Red Rocket!

So a good bit has happened in the last week or so...I left Opononi and began hitching...I was picked up not far from there by a older Maori man named Jason..He drove me around for an hour or so and showed me some sites....he trashed the europeans alot for destroying the native land and trying to change the Maori culture..interesting stuff for sure...I can see where he is coming from on alot of stuff but the sitution is complicated....I hitched two more rides and ultimately ended up in a town called Kerikeri...Its a fairly small town with alot of history. I got picked up by a guy named Mark. He took me back to his place, fed, and put me up for the night. Quality guy...He had alot of cool stories to tell...He has been all around the world as a skipper and commercial fisherman...His house sits right on the Kerikeri inlet, a stones throw from the water...I took a kayak out and kayaked around the bay for a couple hours....saw the first stone and wooden house built in NZ....overall good stuff....Left early friday moring and was dropped off in a little beach side town called Pahia in the Bay of Islands....ended up staying four nights at this hostel...Met some quality people...a bunch of Brits, Germans, and two Americans from San Fran (trevor and jared)....over a couple days we went to a nearby town called Russel and saw some old crap that wasnt worth seeing...besides that we just lounged around...I took a bus tour to Cape Reinga on sunday I believe (the days run together madly) which was cool...saw the lighthouse and stuff, it was a long day to say the least....I ran into a English chap at the hoster a couple nights in...turns out he had a car and was traveling solo...I offered to split the petrol price and so we are traveling around together for the moment in the 1988 toyota corolla aka "the red rocket"...Saw some insanely postcard picture perfect beaches couple days ago.....insane.....So peter and I arrived in Whangarei yesterday...stayed the night in an extremely homely hostile and are sitting in an internet cafe getting caught up on stuff.....the plan now is to travel around, see some local sites and begin to camp some....saving money is the greatest thing ever....I bought some fresh veges yesterday and made a killer salad....im ticked that im going to be missing the steelers whoop up on the redskins...oh well I guess we have many more years of dominace eh.....