It’s long overdue that we share a bit about the third companion on our trip–Agy (pronounced Aggie).  Agy is our silver 1994 Honda Civic that we picked up in Devonport (license AGY100–nice and easy to remember).  She’s been serving us well so far and has many features that are worth sharing and that are well suited to our trip.  Agy has about 170,000 kilometers under her belt, brand new tyres, and an easy plate number to remember.  But those are just the basics.  The “boot” has a rubber floor which is perfect for wetsuits, bathing suits, muddy boots, wet raincoats, etc.  Even better, the rear two windows have “bathing suit” drying bars–perfect for those multiple swim days.  We even have a few extra rubber mats that are perfect for sitting on at our campsites.  The rear seat folds down, and in a pinch we could probably sleep in the back.  Agy has a great dashboard with plenty of space for sunglasses (which are being held in the free pair of socks we got on the flight here), maps, guidebooks, avocados, etc., and two cupholders that are the perfect size for two Cokes.

Back to those socks for a minute.  On the flight here, we got all kinds of goodies–best among them was the sleeping blindfold (I don’t know what the proper name is for those things) and the socks.  Both of these items had a mint smell to them.  When I put the socks on they had a cool feeling to them, and when I put the sleeping blindfold thingy on, it had a relaxing minty smell to it.  Maybe this is fairly common on long flights, but for folks who are used to sleeping to the smell of woodsmoke leaking from the stovepipe and are sometimes awoken by flying squirrels landing on their bed in the middle of the night, this was true luxury.
Getting back to Agy, she’s got a nice rattle from the back hatch that is very reminiscent of my family’s station wagon from when I was a kid.  It’s nice to know that old wagons in New Zealand make the same squeaking rattle.  But, at least Agy doesn’t smell like spilled roast beef juice (If you ever want someone to think that you’ve been storing a dead body in the back of your car just spill some roast beef juice in there and let it sit in the sun for a few days).  I guess that’s also the benefit of the rubber floor.

One of the features that has already been very useful is the removable caving light.  The dome light is a three LED light that you can detach from the car.  This was especially handy when we went caving and my headlamp was running low on batteries. The car light proved very worthy while we were mucking around in the caves and helped me spot one of the cave eels that was trying to eat us as we waded through the underground cave river.  I didn’t mention this in the post about caving, but we saw several eels swimming around in these caves.  Most of the caves we went into required walking through at least ankle deep water.  Some spots were a bit deeper, and then there were some places that you couldn’t see the bottom of the water.  The guidebook said that if you went through these sections you would be rewarded, but after the cave eels sightings Joanie was not too excited to step into a bottomless river with cave eels lurking around.  I, of course, was fine, but I didn’t want to leave Joanie by herself so I pretended that I too did not want to go any further.

Best of all, she can handle a surfboard with ease–both inside and out.  We just picked up a board and it conveniently fits inside the car for days when were in town running errands.  More on the surfing adventures later,but I can sum it up in a few words here: learning, tumbling.  Check out the new pictures on Flickr!

Our first stop was a bit north of Auckland at Maharungi Regional Park.  After showing us our campsite, the camphost then showed us the showers–a beautiful teal blue bay.  It didn’t take too much convincing to get us to “shower”.  Morning swims, afternoon swims, evening swims–no matter what time of day the water feels great!  We ended up spending two nights at Maharungi–one at Sullivan’s Bay and one at a backcountry site on Mita Bay.  The hike from Mita Bay gave us our first taste of New Zealand ferns which are nothing like ferns back home–they’re more like trees.  It’s pretty exciting to have an entirely new set of plants, birds, animals, etc. to experience and learn.

After Maharungi we continued north up the east coast to Waipu.  In full New Zealand adventure spirit we took on what I call the Waipu hat trick–three stops in one day.  First we took a short hike out to Piroa Falls–a destination that one of our guidebooks considered “nothing special as afar as the scenery goes”.  It was a beautiful water fall with several deep swimming holes right at the base.  Check out the pictures and see if they seem sub par–if our guidebook is right, then I guess we’re really in for a treat at some other falls.  After the falls we took off for Waipu Caves.  These caves (and others in NZ) are open for exploration–no user fees, no bars closing them off, no guides to hire.  The caves are well known for the glow worms that cover the cave ceiling like a small milky way.  After trudging through the muddy cave floor and wading through a shallow underground stream we turned off the headlamps and were treated to this incredible sight.  The picture does no justice to what it actually looked like.  Finally, after the cave trip, we headed for our final destination of the day–Uretiti Beach.  There’s a DOC campground there that was full of folks getting in their last full weekend of the summer (school starts back up here on 2/2/09 -folks here put the month second and the day first, but today this works for all of us!).  We picked out our spot and made a quick beeline for the beach–a long stretch of white sand and blue water.  We took the obligatory swim and then settled in for a good night’s rest.

The water is so warm here that a 7:45 am swim on a cloudy day was perfectly comfortable.  What a way to start the day!  We picked up where we left off and had another busy day planned–Whangarei Falls, A.H. Reed Kauri Park, and Abbey Caves.  Since then we’ve made it back down the west coast and have landed at our first WWOOF stop–White Cliff Brewery!  More on that later–it’s great!

Week one has been phenomenal, and we know that we’re just getting started.  We’re enjoying every minute of every day and having an absolute blast.  At the same time, we miss all of our friends and family back home and love getting the skype messages and emails–so keep them coming!