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Published: June 16th 2011
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We were very excited to arrive at Pahia in the Bay of Islands as we were meeting up with Ellie and Iain (who also hired a spaceship) as it was so nice to see two friendly familiar faces after spending so much time away from home.
As we only had two weeks of travelling together, the aim was to cram as much adventure in as possible! However, our first night was spent drinking a few beers, chatting about our travels and enjoying a lovely carbonara (courtesy of Iain) which was cooked on the side of their spaceship 'Kompass' (ours was called 'Lara Lor-Van'😉, whilst we camped in a 24 hour carpark after being tipped off by the woman at the information centre that that's what a lot of travellers tend to do - one free night of camping down!
The next day we went on a trip around the Bay of Islands on a dolphin watching/swimming cruise. Luckily enough for us the pod of dolphins we came across we were able to swim with, so we all got masked up before slipping into the water. Swimming with wild dolphins is the opposite of swimming with dolphins in captivity. With
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we should advertise! wild dolphins, it is up to you to entertain them and not vice versa, therefore we were encouraged to swim as fast as we can, chasing the dolphins and to make noises through our snorkels. Altogether there were about 8 adult dolphins in our pod and they were HUGE! I wasn't prepared for how big they were going to be under the water or how close they would swim and when one swam from underneath me I was screaming into my snorkel! All in all we spent about an hour in the water with them and one of the guides said it was the longest she had ever seen them hang around for which is good, it was amazing to come so close to these wild animals and play with them in the water.
From there we headed North, camping overnight at a secluded beachfront camping ground (for free) and after a quick dip the following morning, we were off in tandem towards Cape Reinga - the Northern most point of NZ, where you can watch the Tasman Sea meeting the Pacific Ocean, stopping at 90 mile beach for some Spaceship cooked lunch (Iain's carbonara again I think -
damn tasty!).
Over the next two weeks, we drove around as much of the North Island as we could, stopping at all of the 'must see' spots along the way. After a night out in Auckland (with James' cousin Megan again), we hit the Coromandel, where we dug our own thermal pool on Hot Water Beach (well, Iain and James did anyway) and visited Cathedral Cove.
From there we went to the Bay of Plenty and camped at the foot of Mount Manganui, unfortunately it was raining so we only stayed one night before heading to Rotorua where we went luging (kind of like sledging) - I was quite bad at this and despite my snails pace managed to crash 3 times! We had decided that we wanted to go white water rafting and after checking out the information centre, we found that one company were celebrating their 20th anniversary and had put their prices back down to what they were 20 years ago - result! so for $48 each we got to go rafting down grade 5 rapids which included a 7m waterfall drop! Such great fun and if you ever get a chance to go then DO
IT!
We then went out for the night in Rotorua, bumping into some girls that we had met at the hostel we worked at in Peru! That's the trail for you!
A short 1 hour drive south from Rotorua and we hit Taupo, the self proclaimed 'Skydive Capital of the World' - but that deserves a blog all to itself! Whilst at Taupo we also visited the Huka Falls and took a Jet Boat ride - a high powered boat that zips along the top of the water and makes 360 degree turns - pretty much like a waltzer on water! So much fun and it took us really close to the falls which was great, we got absolutely drenched!
Taupo was the end of our travels with Ellie and Iain, as they had to head back to Auckland and we were heading South towards Wellington. After saying our goodbyes we headed our separate ways and it was strange to be back to just the two of us again, although it wasn't sad as we knew we would meet up with them again upon our return to Auckland.
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