This was basically a rest day with one goal for the day: Visit Paitangi Ostick of Paitangi Art & Ink.

Some of you probably know that I have been thinking about getting tattooed for a long while. I was thinking of going to the same Auckland artist that got Nina hers from, but it never came together.

Just before we were leaving on our trip now, we saw a documentary on the waka huia youtube channel about this impressive artist up in Northland. So we took the chance and send her an email yesterday to see if it would work out this time.

I got lucky and it so worked out that we could spend a day with her, her lovely partner and the two resident Schäferhunde that also fit perfectly into our schedule.

The final result – copyright notice: this is not CC like the rest, as it is Paitangi’s work and not mine to give.

Paitangi was exactly the artist I could have hoped for for my first ta moko. And she is an amazing person to boot. I felt safe and had no doubt that the outcome would be what I have been looking for. The trip would have been worth it just spending a morning with two lovely people, though. We even got someone slightly re-infected with the motorcycle travel bug.

And that is how I ended up in a backpacker in Paihia with a lower leg mildly leaking black ink and drops of blood … and if you want to hear the story behind it, you can invite me to a beer when we next meet.

copyright notice: this is not CC like the rest, as it is Paitangi’s work and not mine to give.