Kicking Back in Tutukaka

Monday July 6th

After our exhausting day of diving (more to come on that from Caitlin) we finally had a morning to sleep in, and woke up to a beautiful sunny day. We spent some time with the alpacas and Kathy, the woman who owns the farm. She and her husband Dan are from Florida originally and had been sailing around the world for a few years when they pulled up in Tutukaka and fell in love with the place and have been there ever since. The pacas came in about 10 years ago, and she has them because she likes them, not because she does much with them. Apparently they are very stoic creatures, which to some is the finest trait imaginable, I suppose. They do make some pretty funny sounds, and sometims they get their lips caught behind their big front teeth and look around with their goofy underbite sticking out.
We drove back to Whangarei and poked around the shops for a bit. It's a sizable and sprawling town, but the Town Basin near the water is quite pretty. Just out of town there was a kauri stand with a "canopy walkway" which was no where near the canopy- it was just a few feet off the ground in most places, but still cool to see some big old trees and do a bit of a walk. We also stopped over to see Whangarei Falls which were impressive. It used to be a Maori right of passage for boys to jump off the falls, but there was none of that for us, especially when we saw the sign that sewage had leaked last week in the area.

We stopped in the one of the 2 resturants in Tutukaka for a drink by the fire before returning to our cozy guesthouse and another night of one-pot-electric-fryingpan cooking!