New sightings in Zealand

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When people say that New Zealand is amazing and you think well they said Australia was amazing but it isn't... it does leave you a little skeptical. This is until you see the sights and realise well actually its fantastic! Having spent a few days in Auckland sorting out my travels, I took a day out to catch a bus to Mount Eden where you can view the whole of Auckland from the Summit. Here there isn't much to do apart from the view, but its breath taking and even has a compass showing how far away the major cities like London and Tokyo are and which directions one needs to travel to get there!!

From here I walked back to town and on my second day I caught the bus again to the Museum in Auckland as I felt like some culture was in order!! I was hoping to learn about the Maori culture but this wasn't to be. On my third day I jumped on the stray bus, bright and early after leaving the Nomads fusion hostel. The stray buses turned out to be a lot smaller than the OZ experience buses but this meant that the groups are a lot smaller, meaning you get to know each other more.

On the first day we left for Hahei which had a lovely beach walk with tremendous views of Cathedral cove and the beach. The next stop was a drive down to the hot water beach where hot water from fissures would escape through the rocks and heat the sand. The tide was too high for finding these holes as the seawater would just take the hot water away. After the walk we headed back to our little private retreat where we cooked a traditional NZ BBQ equiped with sausages, steak, salads and drinks... hmmmmm

On the second day we were up bright and early ready to head to Raglan which is a surfers hotspot. We checked into our cool hostel which had a pool table, table tennis table and was close to an awesome beach. We went down to the beach for a nice walk but rain stopped our adventures and so we bathed and had a little swim. In the evening we cooked bouritoes which were awesome again and headed to the barn to play drinking games and table tennis. After a game of ring of fire we continued with 21 and Kirsty with the help of the resident canadian (Leandra) were the subject of attention. After a few too many consumptions we played some table tennis where I was the king of the castle! whoop!

Day 3 started out early with a drive to the waitamo caves where we did a long walk again which had fantastic views as expended and came out into a park where we chilled out. We waited for the black water rafters and tubers to come back. After another long drive we arrived in Maketu.

Maketu is home to a small hostel type place where we had an awesome roast dinner with a divine pavlova to finish things off (literally as I had 5 helpings!!) Next this followed with a Mouri show with the guys learning the Haka and the girls learning a funny dance possibly called the Pouka? This was performed in front of everyone and we had a chilled out evening in preparation for White Water Rafting tomorrow!!

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