a week at the beach

this post is coming to you from corolla, north carolina, a beach town on the northern tip of the outer banks where our family has rented a beach house for the week. in the two days that we've been here, i got my first sunburn of the season, played my fair share of pool and ping-pong, and have started and finished two books - an out-of-date book about basic backpacking (not worth a read), and "the lost explorer", about the finding of george mallory's body on everest in 1999. mallory and his partner, sandy irvine, made an attempt on everest's summit in 1924, 29 years before the official recorded summit by sir edmund hillary, but never returned to camp the night of their attempt. since they were alone on the day of their deaths with no witnesses but the Vestpocket camera they were rumored to be carrying (it has yet to be found), the likelihood of their having reached the top has been debated for years. the discovery of his body rekindled the conversation and added some important information. conrad anker, a member of the 1999 expedition and one of the book's authors, seems like a bit of a jerk, but the book is worth a read anyway. (sorry, amazon, for stealing your graphic.)


we just booked 4 nights at the city groove backpackers (hostel) in auckland, another step in making the trip seem more like it's actually happening. we arrive on a thursday morning, and plan to spend at least the weekend in auckland to make final purchases and arrangements for the beginning of the hiking portion.


we're encountering some frustration with the very first part of the plan - what we'd like to do is take a basic coach from auckland (bottom of this map) to cape reinga (unmarked, but the far northern tip) in one day. unfortunately, the stretch above kaitaia, which is called ninety mile beach but is actually only sixty miles long, is accessible only by driving along the hard-packed sand on the beach and is not serviced by the intercity buses that serve the rest of the islands. we can take an intercity bus to kaitaia, but then would have to stay there for the night and hop on a tour bus the next morning for the remaining stretch, adding more cost and time than we'd really like. the planning is fun, though - this is what traveling is really about. in the end, the bus issue will probably end up as another "figure it out when we get there" item.

-rachel