Blogs from Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 70

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a decent New Years. I spend New Years on the beach in Paihai, watching fireworks with Michaela and Geshe. For those of you who have experienced the debautchery of the Niagara Grape and Wine festival, I must say that sadly Paihai is about 100 times worse. Every other person was holding up someone else, and the police, they were out in force. I wouldn't have wanted to be a police officer for sure! They set up big holding tanks for the people who get into trouble, drink underage, or get into fights. I had a more peaceful night then most I would say. I was in bed by 2am! Sad but true, I am starting to feel my age. I caught myself looking at these younger people and ... read more

I had a great day today, and nice night last night. Kerikeri puts on a Caroles at Dusk event every year, so I decided to go with a couple of people from the hostel to sing some caroles and try and get into the mood here amongst such summer weather. I just thought to myself when we were singing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas", how could they sing it when they've never experienced it, and sing with such gusto at that. I then started to sort of, kind of miss not having a white Christmas. Today we were off work early at 3pm to have some social time at work with beers, champange and snacks. I then received more presents from Tom and Julia (bosses) and Pam. Both packages of which I think contain chocolate. ... read more

Just a little update today. It's official!!! The bed in the van is made and completed, with enough storage space under it to store a least a couple of bodies (if necessary!) I also went to my boss's house last night to sew the curtains for the van since I spent time this weekend drilling holes in the van to hang the curtain wire. I'll post pictures in a couple of days as I have to wash the curtains so everything that comes in contact with the curtains dosen't turn maroon. After completing the bed on Saturday, Gesche (a nice German girl and potential travelmate) and Michaela (the hostel manager on the weekend) went down to the Fairy Pools behind the hostel for a nice swim since it was about 30 out plus humidity. Not cold ... read more

Well, it was time for my first mini solo journey before starting work. Well, almost solo! I decided to use Stray (hop on/off bus company) to meet some fellow like-minded travellers and to share the experience with. First stop was Goat Island, a marine reserve on the east coast. The opportunity to do some snorkelling was on offer but I declined. For three reasons 1) The recent storm 2) Visibilty was zero and 3) the fact that the NZ driver/guide wasn't even putting his big toe in the water! Nevertheless we could see blue maomoa, huge snapper and stripey parove...so I didn't feel completely cheated. After that we grabbed some lunch, stopped off to see some huge kauri trees and headed for the Bay of Islands (so-called cos of its 150 or so islands). So base ... read more

Arriving in New Zealand at 4am and feeling shattered after a 12 hour flight, we caught a shuttle bus to the Fat Camel Hostel in downtown Auckland. A busy hostel, so much so that we had to leave our bags outside the room and wait for our beds to be vacated. The hostel staff then recommended that instead of catching up on some sleep , we do a free city tour. This sounded like a good way to orientate ourselves, so we signed up. It was also our first introduction to Stray Travel, a company that operate buses on different routes around the country where you can hop on and off as much as you like. The tour guide on the city tour (Craig) was great fun, and he took us to the Harbour Bridge, a ... read more