Heads up
16th-22nd January 2007

Before we set off down south we headed up to Auckland to see Ian and Tracy (Dave's bro and his girlfriend), before Ian went back off to sea on his Naval duties. As we were up that way, we decided to go a bit further north just to see what the fuss was about. We didn't quite make the Bay of Islands, but did get as far as Mangawhai and stayed in a lovely little backpackers hostel at Mangawhai Heads. The photos of the beach looked so lovely, we decided to spend a day just relaxing by the water, so chose a lovely spot on the estuary just around the corner from the crashing waves of the surf beach. As we were paddling around in the shallows, we saw two birds on the opposite side that looked like they could possibly be penguins. Now, bearing in mind that I'm not a strong swimmer, I thought it might be silly of me to attempt to swim the estuary just on the off chance that this might actually be my first chance at a penguin encounter, but spurred on by Dave offering to swim with me, I decided to go for it, just to satisfy my curiosity. The tide was coming in fast so we had to swim against a fairly strong current to get there, but eventually we made it to the other side. Clambering out onto the sand bank, exhausted, we made our way stealthily towards the "penguins"... only to find they were actually some sort of Cormorant, just stood there, in a sort of penguin-posture, pretending to be penguins. But I guess we'd always have wondered if we didn't try. That evening we had a lovely dinner at a bar/restaurant there, which had a piano-playing chef, and a comet to boot.

All in all, Mangawhai was a great experience, just don't mention the cormorants.