Days 30 - 34: Auckland, Top Bit and Back To Auckland

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Day 30
I had to awake pretty early to catch my plane on to New Zealand so it was lucky there was a guy in my room named Steve who was getting the same flight so we were sure one of us would wake up the other one if people were sleeping in. We didn't book a taxi to the airport because the desk staff assured us it would be absolutely no problem to catch one when we were ready and we'd only need an hour and a half before take-off to check-in. Fiji time prevailed and of course there was no taxi, so we waited, and waited and finally got lucky enough to grab one which managed to get us to the airport just 45 minutes before our plane had to leave. After security and all the rest of it we got through to the gate about ten minutes after they'd started boarding, which was nice because we didn't have to wait around for an age in the departures lounge. The plane to Auckland was nice, I was sat on a row with a lovely girl called Michelle from Bolton and we had three seats between the two of us so there was a nice amount of space to spread out in. We chatted for most of the journey before we both tried to get a little sleep, and since neither of us was very organised we didn't have any accommodation booked so - thankfully for me for those who know me - she sorted everything out for me; brilliant. Arriving in Auckland and having heard nothing but bad things about the city affectionately known as the "Big Smoke" we both decided to head straight for the Kiwi Experience office and book ourselves onto our respective buses, she heading south and me north. After that we had a couple of drinks in Globe Bar downstairs but we both had an early start the next day and called it a night.

Day 31
Waiting for the bus I got chatting to a couple of the people I'd be travelling up north with. There was a couple who weren't a couple Dave and Kym, who were exes who both had partners back home but were travelling through New Zealand together and staying in double rooms every night - doesn't take a genius to figure out how that ended up - and a Canadian lad named Bryan who was only going up to Pahia with us and would then be staying on to do some work there. The journey up was pretty mundane, didn't see many sheep which I was really disappointed about after hearing so much about how New Zealand has ten times the amount of sheep as it does people. We stopped on the way at a weird little honey shop which had a huge "wall of bees" exhibit which was basically a glass wall that had an enourmous hive behind it so you could see the inside workings of a hive; fascinating. Steve from Fiji was on my bus too, which was kind of cool because it was good to have someone I knew, if only someone I had only met a couple of days before, when starting out on a new bus. The weather was actually quite nice when we began the journey but as we neared Pahia the dark clouds began to roll in, and my plans to go swimming with dolphins were looking like they might end up in the toilet. Arriving I and Bryan, who had decided to swim with the dolphins too, were told that we could go out with the boat but there was virtually no chance - and the lady in charge made it pretty clear that "virtually" no chance actually meant "you've got a better chance of the dolphins putting on eypatches, jumping aboard the boat, hijacking it and taking it on a piracy tour of the southern seas" - of being able to actually swim with them. So we were given the choice of going ahead with the trip, or postponing it a couple of days to see if the weather cleared. I'd been "reliably" informed that this was just a front and there was warm weather on its way in the next few days so we decided to put it off and hope for the best. Our plans scuppered we had nothing to do but head back to the hostel. Pahia's a nice little town but unless you're out doing something to do with the Bay of Islands there really isn't anything else there. We sat around, watched some tele, couldn't head down to the beach as by this time the "temporary" weather had hit full force so it was pouring with rain and coupled with some nice strong winds, kind of put a damper on going for a walk too. A few beers and pub quiz later I was feeling in a better mood, Dave and Kym had managed to win the quiz in their team and invited me to partake of some of their bar tab. Never one to turn down hospitality I gleefully accepted and met the other pair of people they were with, a couple of English lads named John and Chris. John is actually the events manager at Brands Hatch and Chris is a drunken fool, good lads. So that was it for the rest of the night, again the early start loomed so we called it a night pretty early.

Day 32
The "temporary" weather was now very apparently a permanent fixture for our trip up to Cape Reinga and we had the great (mis)fortune of having Auto as our driver. On any other day I would've probably really enjoyed him, he's a little bit insane and a good laugh, but with the weather pummeling down on the windows it was all a bit much. Auto is a white New Zealander. Auto went to school with a lot of Maoris. Auto desperately wants to be a Maori more than anything else in the entire world. This is very annoying when he plays crappy Maori music at a ridiculous volume so you can't hear your own music, when he spends the entire time talking about the Maoris and how wonderful, magical, fantastic their history and culture is, and when he absolutely refuses to call New Zealand anything but Ao'tearoa, the Maori name meaning "the land of the long white cloud".

As we bombed on through to 90-Mile Beach - which isn't actually 90 miles long but something nearer 65, it was incorrectly measured way back when and the name just kind of stuck - the rain just kept on falling. We were meant to stop and get out to chill on the beach in the summer, do some shellfishing involving some kind of toe movement in the sand but thanks to the wonderful New Zealand summertime we didn't manage to get any of that done. We did stop to do some sandboarding which was good fun again. The wet sand meant that the run was a lot more compact and allowed you to pick up a little bit more speed, but the hill was twice the size of the one I went on in Fiji and consequently was twice as knackering to get up; I only went twice again. After we'd allowed everyone to have their go it was back onto the bus, wet and sandy, for the drive up to Cape Reinga, the most northerly point of New Zealand and the place where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. I've seen photos of what it's supposed to look like, and it looks pretty magnificent, the two oceans are clearly different colours and the view along the coast is supposed to be pretty breathtaking. I saw cloud. Lots of cloud. In just the same way as I didn't see Haleakala due to cloud cover I've been to yet another amazing view and not been able to see anything. Suitably bored and annoyed I went back to the bus and listened to some music whilst we waited around for people to eat their lunches and do whatever it was they were doing. The journey back to Pahia involved two stops. The first was at a weird museum of wood, this wood is old, really, really old and for some reason that means they charge you an arm and a leg to buy some old wood. The real reason we stopped was so Auto could wash the bus down and get all the sand off, 90-mile beach is actually a public highway, with signposts and all, so there were a few buses there waiting to wash down too which is why we needed the pretence of some kind of attraction to keep us occupied whilst we waited. Needless to say the distraction of old wood didn't last a particularly long time so I sat bored, cold and wet with Steve in the cafe and had a drink. The second stop was in a place called Mangonui, at a fish and chip shop. Despite the exotic name this town could've been plonked right down on the Devon or Cornish coastline and not looked out of place at all, even down to the slightly rusted fishing boats and rolling green hills; and of course, the weather. It was about this time that I was starting to plan my trip to Australia, began regretting giving myself so much time in New Zealand and generally ruing my whole decision making process.

Days 33 - 34
My first experience of having to check out of somewhere before actually leaving occurred today as we were forced to check out in the morning but our bus back to Auckland wouldn't be leaving till later that afternoon so it was a case of kicking my heels trying to AGAIN find something to do in the little town that is Pahia before going off in the afternoon to do my dolphin swim. The weather was still awful, but I didn't have any choice as I was leaving that afternoon and had already paid for the trip. They again warned us there wasn't a great chance of being able to swim with the dolphins but there was a new problem now, the boat that had gone out that morning hadn't even seen any dolphins, let alone let people swim with them. Inevitably I saw nothing, was very cold though. As we got back to shore the Kiwi Experience bus was waiting for me, because in their desperate search for those bloody things we'd run on a bit late. As such I didn't even have time to arrange a partial refund and had to accept all that was being offered which was a free trip to go out again because we hadn't seen anything. Really useful for me that. The only real positive to come out of the whole thing was I finally got my towel back off Kate! After having had it stolen in Volivoli in Fiji and then not returned in Auckland my towel had finally managed to track me down in Pahia, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.

I just tried to put all that behind me on the trip back to Auckland. I was seriously considering changing my plans and cutting my journey short at that point but I convinced myself to give it a bit more time, I was rolling into Auckland that night and Kev and Sare from Fiji were in town, in my hostel I later learnt, so I could at least hang out with some friends. The rest of my time in Auckland doesn't really involve much else. I went out with Kev and Sare on the Thursday and Friday night and spent the Friday on the internet all day catching up with my Fiji blog. Met some crazy Canadian named Randy on the Firday who was staying in Kev and Sare's room, was a nice enough guy but must have hit on every single woman in the room during the course of the evening, a most aptly named man if ever I met one. It was quite a cool time, if only because I was with some cool people, but I wasn't going to shed any tears when I left the next day, I had changed my opinion of the country somewhat and was going to stick it out as best I could for the time I was there.

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Photos

Xmas In Auckland
That giant Father Xmas had a mechanical finger that beckoned towards you and an eyelid that blinked, it is truly one of the scariest things I've ever seen

90-mile Beach
Look at that lovely weather!

Cape Reinga
This is how bored we were, Bryan resorted to this

Bay of Islands
The weather went from this...

Bay of Islands II
... to this in a matter of moments. Yay! The first one was the best weather I had in the north