Days 2 and 3

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For my 2nd and 3rd days, I spent most of the time in the tourist town of Paihia. Paihia is an historically important town as it used to be a popular trade route, and was one of the first towns settled by the British as part of a missionary mission. Kerikeri, nearby, was the first.

The town is relatively small, but is basically the gateway to the bay of islands. There's no fancy naming here, Bay of Islands is literally a bay, with lots of small islands. The area is known for dolphins, that are typically very friendly with people. There is also a popular spot called hole in the rock in which there is an archway near an island. It was my intention to swim with the wild dolphins. However, it took a long time to find the dolphins, and the ocean was a little too rough to allow us to get out in the water with them. We still found a pod of bottlenose dolphins, that I was able to take a picture of.

Afterwords, I went to find rainbow falls, which was about a 50ft waterfall. I then spent the night in the parking lot, and tried to take some pictures of the stars, with my camera that didn't have the correct lens for shooting stars ( the lens can't open wide enough).

The next day I went skydiving. The weather was kind of bad in the morning, so my jump was postponed until about 1:30pm. In the meantime, I went to the Waitangi treaty grounds. This area is very important to the history of New Zealand, as it's the place where the Mauri (maw-ree) and the British decided to stop fighting. It's basically when the 2 societies began to live and learn together. I finally jumped, then started driving toward Auckland while taking a quick stop in Whangerei. Whangerei is just a small city that I spent a little time in, and also found Whangerei falls, again, about a 50ft waterfall.

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