New Zealand - The North Island

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I arrived in Auckland at about 11am on the 29th of February. It was scorching hot so I had high expectations for the rest of the trip! I caught the bus over to my friend Pauls work and he showed me round the urban design office he works in. I also met up with an old uni friend who actually owns the company. I stayed at Pauls for 2 nights and he showed me the sights of Auckland. We had intended to go to the horse races but since we woke up to torrential rain we thought we would give it a miss and just did the usual sights - the Sky tower and the Auckland museum. i have to admit that I wasn't really impressed with Auckland as a city. It had streets as wide as LA boulevards and lots of box like architecture. there was some nice new developments on the water front but for me it was nothing special.

I caught the Stray bus on the 2nd of March which is to be my vessel for the next 4 weeks. The first stop was Hahei beach which is on the Coromandel Peninsula. We started with a walk down to Cathedral Cove which was a pretty beach with blue water but so many tourists. In the evening after a barbeque we headed to the hot beaches. This can only be done at high tide which was at 10pm so as we had no spades to dig with we all headed out with saucepans... just as good right? Our driver neglected to advise us to bring torches so we all looked like really unprepared losers stumbling across the beach to the sea using our mobile phones as torches! Once we got there we had to dig a hole to get to the natural geothermic hot water. Well our holes were really rubbish as we weren't kitted out properly and the water that we found was far too hot to even dip a finger into so we just stole someone else's hole after they had left.... much easier! It was a very unique experience sitting in water hot enough to be a bath by the sea with millions of stars above you with lots of new friends.

After Hahei the bus took us to a place on the West coast called Raglan which is a well known surf town. Well I say town but it was actually more like a little village! I didn't do any surfing as I was so tired and needed to recharge my batteries - the water was also a bit too cold for my liking! Maybe save the surfing for Australia as I definitely want to try it. We cooked a lovely curry in the evening between 6 of us.

After 2 days in Raglan we drove to a place called Waitomo which is renown for its underground cave system. There were a variety of caving experiences to chose from so never being too shy for a challenge I chose the most adrenaline packed (for the price I was willing to pay as I didn't really fancy spending 8 hours underground) We got kitted out in these mega thick wetsuits which were quite tricky to put on teamed with white wellies - very sexy! We started by abseiling into the cave which was probably the scariest bit as you couldn't see the bottom. We had lights on our heads so that we weren't in complete darkness and could see all the beautiful rock formations and stalagtights and stalagmites (ahem spelling) If you turned off the lights you could see hundreds of glow worms on the walls and ceiling of the caves. I couldn't believe that they also had crayfish scuttling around in there too. We did more abseiling down some freezing waterfalls and an optional rock climb which was quite interesting wellies but I made it thanks to my rock climbing prep back in London haha! I really enjoyed getting the old adrenaline pumping again but was quite relieved after hours to see daylight!

On out way back to the hostel we had a random stop off at an angora shearing place - the rabbits aren't at all hurt and actually need to be shorn otherwise they would overheat and die (well that's the story they are sticking with) It was hilarious they stretched the rabbits out on a rack to shear them and spin them round like a spit roast!

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Photos

Cathedral Cove
my first day on the stray bus

all of us in the hole we "found"
it's not a blured picture - that's the steam coming off the water - it really was that hot!

Squeezing through very small spaces in the caves
No good if you are claustrophobic!!