The hostel turned out to be right on the sea shore, with sand dunes and green hills all round the semi-circular bay. The sun was shining, it was quite warm and the water looked very green and inviting, but I resisted. Instead, we went to see some giant trees.

We drove through some sort of jungle - huge tree ferns and palm trees and weird squawkings - until we reached the giant tree national park. It was only a couple of hundred yards along wooden walkways to a massive kauri tree, 2000 years old, five metres in diameter, about 55 metres tall. It had beautiful, silvery bark, rippled with a spiral pattern all the way round, and no branches for the first 20 metres or so. It towered above all the other trees in the forest, and was rather majestic.

A short drive further on took us to a gravelled crcuit of footpaths to see several more of them, and we walked through the squawking forests for a few miles.

After lunch we took the scenic road back to Auckland, and stopped at the supermarket for supper supplies before returning to the Aloe Tree hostel that we'd stayed in before. We cooked and then walked into town to the cinema to see 'The Station Agent', a delightful, sureal film that, again, we'd been unable to see back home.