Paul set the alarm for 5:00am, low tide started at 6:30 so we figure we would go for a run then have a nice soak! It was hard for me to crawl out of the van so early, I slept well in the van. The morning run was nice. Tee shirt and short weather, needed for our hilly run. I was running in my glasses and Paul was just ahead of me when I hear and see a gull (smaller than our gulls) dive at Paul. Crap! I freeze and begin to panic, Paul looks at me and tells me to duck, I'm getting bombed from the back. I want to turn and run for my life back to our van, however Paul tells me they will stop attacking just keep running (in the opposite direction of protection.) They did stop just as we reached the top of the hill, I was pretty freaked out, Paul was laughing about the situation, finally realizing what i have been telling him about birds having a personal vendetta against me. We find a walkway along the beach and check it out. It was not a very cool walkway and hard to run on. Heading back to the spot we were just attacked I told Paul they would be waiting for us. He did not believe me. With my adrenaline pushing me through I told Paul that we needed to stay together. I felt vulnerable in my glasses, while they offer protection from beaks I have no peripheral vision. Like I said those rotten gulls were ready for us. Once the attack was on I went into flight mode, i turned to see Paul stop running down the hill and try to fight them off. What an amiture! i tried that once, but learned it makes it easier to lock in their target. Like a seasoned veteran I ran fast down the hill and took off my shirt and swung it helicopter style like a crazy person! Once at the bottom they left us alone. While it is funny, my fear of birds has now grown. I'm hoping that this will be one of my last blogs talking about a bird attach.
After a hot show and an egg breakfast in the kitchen we make friends with an Australin man. At first we did not know he was Australian but thought he was a kiwi. He said he was from Queensland, but with his thick accent it sounded like Queenstown. After about 5 min we realized our error, but did not say anything since we do plan on going to Australia. This man talked our ear off for over an hour. We hardly go 3 sentences in. We listened to the run down of his entire family vacation in NZ. The highlight of course was the Lord of the Rings tours/sets! He said it was because of his daughter, but once he started quoting from the movie we knew who the fanatic was.
We went to Cathedral Bay. It is about an hour walk from the parking lot from the bluff down to the bay. It was a great trail. You cut through some private land that have sheep! We were very close to sheep and little lambs. I was nervous to be close to animals since my morning encounter with the birds. Paul shot some video since our other camera is waterlogged. The bay was very pretty even on our stormy day. They have a lot of diving and kayaking when the weather is tamer. We are glad we saw it, but had no reason to stay longer.
Onward down the coast we stopped at the next big town Whangamata (fang-a-mata.) We uploaded the pictures from the memory card and were pleased to see that they were there! We went to the I site and asked directions to the DOC (department of conservation) campground. It was right outside of town. We set up camp, and saw a hike to a waterfall. The hikes or tramps as they call them here are measured in miles or km but in time. We need to start timing ourselves on these tramps so we can gage how accurate the time is. We think it is silly, if you post miles or km's most people would know the time they could make it in. But when you just post time we don't know if they mean time for a young person or old person, in shape or not in shape ect. Anyway the waterfall was pretty and it was in some dense tropical forest, but without the humidity! There were mine shafts in the area so we stayed on the trail since the vegetation has covered most of them. We did see two right off the trail, and they look scary.
We had a nice evening with leftover spaghetti and vino. As we were tucking into our van to sleep we heard some noise and saw some sort of rodent looking thing in a tree, so I Locked the doors (no vacancy.)
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