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Published: February 2nd 2010
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After a short night sleep we woke up at the Base Hostel in Auckland around 6:30am to catch the bus at 7am. We ate egg, ham and cheese bagel sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts hmmm bagels we miss you. The big green bus then showed up and we were beginning our 19 day adventure around New Zealand.
After we stopped at a few more hostels we were on our way north to a small town of 1500 people called Paihia. It is located in the Bay of Islands which contains about 140 islands, not all are inhabited. We made a quick toilet/café stop for anyone who didn’t get breakfast before the early departure. Then again in an hour we made a quick toilet stop. We had to fill out about 5 forms since it was our first day of the Hop On/Hop Off tour.
The forms ranged from a check in form for the hostel that evening, activities we could add on, our date of return back to Auckland, etc. The great thing about the Kiwi Experience is that you can stay as long as you would like in each location as the ticket is good for 12 months. We
are staying only 1 or 2 nights in each town since we are here for 19 days.
We arrived in Paihia around 11:30am and checked into the hostel Pipi Patch, also a Base hostel. They only had dorm rooms so no option for Pete and I to have our own room but it worked out ok. There were 4 bunk beds in the room and we filled the last 2 open beds. The advantage to this dorm room was the bathroom with a shower and also another room with a sink and small fridge was all in the room.
We went to get some lunch as it was now at 12pm and we ate around 6:45am. We walked along the beach until we found a cute bar that had a lunch menu. We both had a chicken and avocado sandwich with chips(fries), I had a draft cider and Pete had a coke. After lunch we went back to the room and I slept for about an hour as I was exhausted from the night before with little to no sleep on the bus ride.
When I woke up we then walked down to the ferry landing to
take a 15 minute ferry ride over to Russell, another quant town across the bay. We arrived around 3pm and walked around following the map that the hostel gave us to the different viewpoints with steep hills up to them getting our workout. Then we found our way to Long Beach and refreshed by hopping in the water. Around 5:30pm we decided to go back to the hostel since we signed up for the BBQ dinner that evening. The room and BBQ with a beer was 35 NZD=$25 USD per person.
After dinner we relaxed in the room, by packing, updating the blog, reading our books then went to bed. Five of our dorm mates were going on a day trip the next morning so they were getting up by 6:30am and our bus was leaving at 8am, so it worked out well that we weren’t going to be the annoying people leaving early in the morning. All of our dorm mates were 18 to 20 years old, so we felt really old. Three of the girls were from Canada and were traveling for 3 weeks in New Zealand(NZ), 5 weeks in Australia then onto Thailand for 5 weeks.
WOW their parents must have lots of money cause I don’t know anyone that got to do that kind of travel at 18-20 years old. Day
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