North Island

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Since my last entry, and sadly leaving Queenstown and our great group, I travelled back up the South Island and boarded a ferry from Picton to Wellington in the North Island. Luckily me and Kirsty were still together, the only 2 remaining members of our group, who we miss soooo much.

Wellington was a nice enough city, went for a nice walk and found Mac's Brewery where we had a few beers. We had St Patricks day there too which was great as there seemed to be a huge amount of Irish there, and therefore a number of good Irish pubs. We found a great pub which had a live band playing great Irish music. So we painted some green clovers on our faces and got down to the pub early to join all the other mad people, dancing crazily to Irish jigs - what a fun night.

We stayed in Wellington for 3 nights and then rejoined the Kiwi bus up to Taupo, with the intent of doing another skydive. Even Kirsty, who was so scared of doing a skydive, managed to psych herself up to do it. Unfortunatley when we arrived the wind was too strong and therefore it was too dangerous to jump out of a plane at 15,000 feet. Instead we sat in the sunshine and drank lots of beer.

The next day we travelled up to Rotorua. This is a lovely place, but it absolutley stank of eggy popcorn due to the geothermal springs. We went to a Maori evening where we entered a Maori village, where they welcomed us with a ceremony, demonstrated how they used to live, and even did the Haka which was fantastic. For the welcoming ceremony we had to elect an alpha male on our bus as our 'chief', and when we arrived our 'chief' plus 5 other 'chiefs' had to stand and be intimidated by a group of very scary Maori men who stuck their tongues out at them shouting and with their eyes nearly popping out. The chiefs weren't allowed to smile or laugh, which I think I would have found very hard not to do. But they all managed to keep a straight face. We also had the most amazing meal, roast dinner and dessert and ..............custard - I really miss the small things in life. I've also developed an unhealthy obsession for Snickers chocolate bars, I have to have one every day. I think the weight I lost in Australia is being piled back on in NZ, I don't think I've ever eaten so much junk food.

Anyway, back to the travels....must stop thinking about food all the time. We then went up to the Bay of Islands and Paihia where we spent a couple of nights. The weather was pretty horrible whilst we were there. We took a walk to the Waitangi Treaty House which was very interesting. It was here on February 6th, 1840, that the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between Maori and the British Crown. We saw one of the world's largest Maori ceremonial war canoes and also the original treaty house.

So, I'm now in Auckland, which seems so far to be a nice enough place. Apparently it's the fourth largest city in the world by land mass. Last night was Kirsty's last night which I was very sad about. We made it a big night, and met up with Fiona who was also on our Kiwi bus in the South Island. We managed to find a small Irish pub (yes another one) and pretty much took it over choosing all the songs, so we put on lots of Oasis, Guns n Roses and Jonny Cash songs and basically the whole pub had a huge karaoke session. There until 3.30am and felt the effects today - ouch!

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Photos

Mount Doom
as featured in Lord of The Rings

Umi!
Silly joke - Ginette, Lucy, Eve & Marc should know what I'm on about