Coromandel Peninsula

TAIRUA, New Zealand- The morning was freezing cold. The kind of morning that you don’t want to get out of bed and venture out into — especially when you’re waking up in a van.

But as I first craned my neck up I could see over the steering wheel that the bay was glistening orange-y in the early morning sun. I rose up a little higher and saw the boats in the harbor. Then I got on my knees and saw the green mountains beyond. By that time I was up.

I then went for a walk with Petra and Rivka on the beach on the Pacific side of the strip of land that we camped on — an odd strip which stands like a thin gate between the ocean and the bay that ends at a small, bulbous peak called Paku Summit. A truly strange specimen of geography.

Last night when we arrived I didn’t notice it until I took up the drone. I began filming the water on one side and then spun it around to find the ocean on the other side — what the fuck? I didn’t know that was there.

I walked along the beach with my girls and we talked about the day. They stuffed their pockets with seashells. Then a dog ran up and knocked Rivka over. It was a big, well-pruned, high-priced husky. The 2-year-old cried. The dog owner jogged on.

I used to think that I despised pet dogs. But I don’t have anything against them. It’s their owners that I tend to feel onerously towards. Not all dog owners, just the ones that expect you to treat their animals like their something special.

Dogs are not people too.

Cathedral Cove

This place almost comes off as a parody. It’s just so out-of-the-brochure-beautiful it almost seems faked. Like something cooked up by Pixar that my kids would enjoy watching. It was picturesque. Perhaps too picturesque.

Just look at the photos …

My family and I walked down to the beach at Cathedral Cove and just sat in a row on a big log of driftwood, watching the waves, talking, making jokes, drinking beer.

“Get out of here, you bastards!” Petra heard me yell at the seagulls and decided to replicate the scene over and over every time a seagull dared land nearby. And because Petra was doing something Rivka of course had to try to copy it.

“Get out of here, you bastards!” — the sound of two little girls running all over the beautiful beach with their arms flailing over their heads.

I just sat there and watched, drinking my Steinlager.

***
I met another vlogger on the beach. He was from Malaysia, where I’m heading next.

Vloggers can identify each other on sight — there is a particular gear set up and habits that vloggers have (like talking to yourself in front of a camera that you’re holding) that are dead giveaways. We talked shop. We both had the same drone, one of the same cameras, and we compared my DJI Osmo+ against his DJI gimbal.

There is sort of a camaraderie in this occupation. Vloggers seem to enjoy meeting each other and helping each other out. Perhaps it’s because we know that what we do each day is kind of strange and often overtly awkward.

This is very different than blogging. For whatever reason, bloggers tend to hate each others guts have this insecure animosity towards each other.

Click on the thumbnails for larger images and a slideshow.