by Deneice Arthurton

Created on: September 07, 2010

In 2003, after an all-too-close personal encounter with the Grim Reaper, my partner and I decided to sell our house, give away all our possessions and head off on a world adventure. Excited, scared and with all around us wondering if we had gone a little mad, we quite literally stuck a pin in a map of the world to decide our fate. Our pin made a little hole in New Zealand. We tucked our surf boards under our arms and endured the torture of a cattle class 24 hour flight from London to Auckland.

We bought a battered Toyota Hi-ace van based solely on the fact that it had a rainbow painted on the side and would henceforward be known as The Rainbow Wagon. For the next eight months this van would be our transport, bedroom, lounge and shelter.

In keeping with our new philosophy we set off from the Auckland urban sprawl with no particular destination in mind, just wanting to experience the freedom of going wherever the wind blew us. It blew us to the East Cape of the North Island; an area which, although we didn't know it then, was sparsely populated and for some reason little visited by tourists.

The population of this part of New Zealand is mostly Maori and a stronghold of the Ngati Porou tribe. Many white New Zealanders have never ventured far into this territory; its geographical situation and geological structure means that the East Cape is off the beaten track and a destination of itself and not a means to arriving anywhere else.

The summer months in the Southern Hemisphere are those from December to February and during those months many East Cape New Zealanders shut up their houses, gather together their camping gear and head to the beach to stay at one of the many 'freedom camps' located up and down the coastline. Many will stay for the whole summer, commuting daily to their places of work and returning as the sun begins to sink; just in time for the firing of the barbecue and as the ice-cold beers are being passed round.

We stumbled, completely by accident, on the first of the freedom camps that we would come to know and love at a place called Kaiaua; a beautiful crescent of pale sand where sunsets colored the cliffs and ocean shades of lilac, cream and rose and pods of wild dolphins frequently pass by.

When we first arrived at Kaiaua we were completely alone, save for the gulls and gannets and the sounds of the wild ocean which rocked us to sleep at nights. We spent our days surfing, snorkelling the turquoise waters, collecting strange, colorful shells

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