Haruru Falls II and navigating in the dark.

Last night ended around 2AM after multiple failed attempts at locating some look-out point that looks out over Paihia. Bruna and I ended up following a hopeless trail through the bushes in near complete darkness using only the light from my phone to navigate. It ended up just going in a loop through the bush and clearly was not meant to be used at night. The night was salvaged when went to sit on the beach and got to watch heavily intoxicated people set off fire works.

Today we did the falls track. The weather was great and I had food to eat at the end. In addition to the excitement of this journey we found a camera that someone had left at the falls. We were pretty sure we'd seen who it belonged to and tried to track them down on the way back to the hostel. Unfortunately we were unable to find them. However me being the detective and good samaritan that I am was unprepared to throw the towel in on this. I began to look through the photos and realized that this camera had close to 600 pictures on it chronicling one or more peoples entire trip starting presumably in south-east Asia or perhaps the middle east. Being the clever guy that I am I noticed a picture that was recently taken up near Cape Reinga and had a rented van with a visible license plate on it. I figured that was the best chance of finding them but I was unsure how to utilize it outside of looking for a silver van with that license plate.

We kept our eyes open on the way back to the hostel and while we ate our ice cream but to no avail. We saw a lot of silver vans but none with the right license plate or that perfectly matched the description in the photo. However as we made our way down Kings Road towards the hostel I saw a van that appeared to meet the description. As we goroe van. The owners were no where to found and instead of wasting time staking out the van I put a piece of paper under the wiper blade with my name, e-mail address and cell number so they could get in touch. No more than five minutes had gone by before I spotted them at their van and went over to inform them I had their camera and just had to go and grab it from my room. The lot of them were absolutely stunned thinking that they had lost all of their trip photos. The camera was returned and the their trip was saved. Karma points were earned.

That wraps up the exciting events of the day. Tonight is Bruna's last night so we are going out for dinner at one of my favorite eating spots in Paihia called "The Beach House Cafe". They have incredible burgers. Nothing like Fergburger but still very tasty.