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Published: August 8th 2007
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We left Wellington the following morning after the rugby Sevens Chaos and like most of Wellington we were sporting a huge hangover. We boarded the Magic bus after nearly a week away from it (hello old friend) and after saying goodbye to Barbara we set off for Napier.
Our driver was an interesting fellow, giving us his whole life story on the journey. Stories included his brother's time in and out of gaol and the mate who was abused by a priest, the priest still being protected by the Church today!!
On the way, as is custom with Magic Bus, we stopped for morning tea where we also got to see Kiwis. I was extremely excited about this; the others could probably confirm that I'd been going on about seeing a live Kiwi since I arrived. As Kiwis are nocturnal animals they are housed in a dark house and after our eyes had grown used to the light we were faced with a real Kiwi. It was very exciting. For those who have no idea about Kiwis; they are quite large birds, the females typically larger than the males as they lay huge eggs, the eggs being
the size of the actual bird. They also don't fly as years of living on the forest floor has lead to their wings becoming redundant. This is also the reason they are endangered, as there have been predators introduced to the Kiwi's natural habitat that are wiping them out.
The experience of seeing kiwis was almost enough to get me over my hangover, that was until our next stop: The $2 Tui brewery tour. Yes you guessed, you pay two dollars and get three pints of beer, however just the smell of it was enough to turn my stomach. I managed to persevere with one pint and made a failed attempt at a second, it was a shame as the beer was really good. Unbelievably our third stop before Napier was a wine tasting, this would have been the best day ever, it was such a shame we'd had a heavy night the night before.
Shortly after the wine tasting, and a promise to myself that I'd never go near a drop of alcohol again, we made it to Napier. Napier is the art Deco capital of New Zealand and we immediately found an art deco
trail that was leaving in a couple of hours. The hostel was nice and town very unusual, but with only staying one night there was no time to see the famous aquarium and do the art deco walk…… So if any one reading did see the famous aquarium then let me know what it was like.
The Deco walk was interesting to an extent but one building tends to look like another once you've seen 5 streets of art deco and towards the end I was trying to sneak off for some food.
The next morning we hopped back on the bus and headed to Lake Taupo. This was always going to be a highlight of the trip as I'd vowed I would do my sky dive here. It is a famous place to sky dive and the cheapest you will find too.
After getting into the hostel which was actually very nice (it seems hostels in the North Island beat the socks of the south island) we headed into town and to the information centre to see what to do. After a yummy lunch we found out our sky dive was cancelled but
we got
booked on tomorrows one instead. We then split up and I went to the little museum. Here you receive the geographic history of how the volcano exploded and made Taupo. It also had some every interesting Maori history; It does seem that the north Island, with the exception of Kaikora in the south, is more set up for Maori things. After the museum we met up by the harbour where we took a sail boat to see the Maori carvings on the rocks (see pic) They were very impressive but they are not that old, carved in the 1960's to prove that modern day Maori could still carve like their ancestors. We had tea and coffee and the crew took the pi*s because we were backpackers exclaiming 'hide the biscuits, backpackers on board'. The only reason the biscuits spent most of their time on our side was because they were gingernuts- the king of all biscuits. Cheers guys !!!!
That evening- still not full up from our stolen biscuits- we went back to our hostel and cooked some dinner, all of us preoccupied by our pending sky dive in the morning!!!!
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