Bay of Islands

I spent a few days in Auckland waiting for Laura to arrive. This is where over a third of the NZ population live. It's a pretty big city but nothing too exciting.

Laura ariived on Wednesday sans luggage. That had gone to Singapore. Luckily, NZ is quite efficient compared to the UK and after talking to one person at the airport the luggage was found and dropped off at the hostel that evening with minimum fuss.

We spent a few days in Auckland waiting for Laura to get over her jet lag. She said she was fine but would promptly fall asleep at 7pm and then be waking me up at 4am.

We then decided to get a bus up to the Bay of Islands.

On the way up we stopped off at various points. One time to look at a big Kauri tree. These are really big old trees that the Kiwi's are very proud of despite there not being many left because the Europeans chopped most of them down. Now they are protected so when they find a really big old one they make it into a tourist attraction.

We also stoppped off in Opononi to watch a short film about Opo the gay dolphin. He swam into the harbour in 1955 and was instantly a huge star because of his friendly nature. They said he was gay because they were trynig to be politically correct!?! Anyway, he was a big star until he died 2 years later. No one knows why he died but some say that he might have got in the way of the local fishermen who used to fish with dynamite... What they did find out when his body was washed up was that Opo was in fact a girl... He/she is buried in the village and there's a little statue of him/her.

We based ourselves in Paihai which is a nice little coastal resort just on the Bay of Islands.

We took a day trip up to Cape Reinga which is the northern most point of NZ that you can reach by vehicle. A nice little spot with a lighthouse and where the Pacific meets the Tasman sea. We had a nice guide called Murray who assummed we were all a bit hard of hearing (well, Laura is getting on a bit) as he liked to say everything twice. He kept us all entralled with various stories throughout the day. He was particularly found of stories involving cars sinking on 90 mile beach. We heard a few of them...

It was a long day on the bus but the sights were good. We were told all about the Kauri tree again (I even bought a bit for $16, it's 40,000 years old!).

We also went boogie boarding on the sand dunes which was really cool, photos to follow.

And we took a stroll along 90 mile beach which is actaully only 64 miles long but the NZ tourism quite rightly agreed that no one would visit it if they called it 64 mile beach so they lie and say it's 90 miles long to pull in the tourists. It works, we went!!

The next day we hired bikes and went for a ride. We followed the only road out of town which soon turned into the longest gravel road ever so the day turned into more of a bike push than a bike ride. We took a picnic though and ate that at the top of a big hill with glorious views of the bay and 100mph winds. It's really hard to put crisps in your sarnies when it's that windy!

We also took a boat trip out into the Bay of Islands which is pretty much what it says it is, a big bay with loads of islands. We saw the hole in the rock, again another fine example of creative naming, it's a big rock with a hole. The trip was OK but improved as soon as we sailed into a big pod of crazy dolphins. There were loads of them and they were all coming right up to the boat and diving out of the sea, it was pretty spectacular. Unforntunatley we weren't allowed to swim with them as there were babies in the pod but they were nice to see.

Our final day we took a walk up to the Treaty House where the Maoris signed the agreement to give NZ to the British. We managed to get in for free by taking the coastal walk up to the grounds and sneaking around. Laura is already getting into the traveller ways of getting stuff for free or as cheaply as possible. Didn't take her long, the pikey!

Then it was the bus back to Auckland.

Next stop, Waitomo