New Zealand in Breath

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Ok, you may've noticed I've been a bit inactive for a while. "Couldn't be asked!" as the brits say. But I'll try to squeeze all my adventures in.

We arrived in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, situated on the north island. We weren't wild about the place - it lacked personality, a bit uninteresting, to be frank. We looked into getting on a tour bus, which is basically how every backpacker does NZ, but decided against it. The tours are around 750 dollars, which brings you up to 90 dollar days if you're only around for three weeks. Being on someone elses schedule is also not much fun for me, and this trip has made me appreciate how much I like being in the car, on a roadtrip.

We spent a day going to EVERY hostel in the city, checking noticeboards to see if anyone else was in our position and was interested in renting a car (I can't drive here yet becuase my license doesn't allow it.) We called everyone, and their number was disconnected or they had just left. The next day, we printed off ads and went around to EVERY hostel posting them. That's when Adam came back to the room and met Kaz.

Kaz is from Birmingham, England (Biiiiiirmingham). The sheer coincidence of our meeting is pretty astounding. She hadn't planned on stopping in Auckland at all - but en route she decided she should at least have a look. She was booked into a different room, but the receptionist accidentally gave her the wrong key, and she wound up in ours. Her schedule and itinerary were identical to ours - this is particularly rare, as most travellers in NZ are here for a year or at least a few months, not two weeks (three but it had taken us so long to find a ride.) So, feeling particularly lucky, we hit the road and travelled northbound towards the bay of islands.

As soon as we pulled out of Auckland, Adam and I could finally understand what everyone was raving about. Five days in a shit city is enough to put you off the entire country - but we had a quick turn around. The drive was mostly along the coast, up and down green rolling hills, absolutely jam packed with sheep/ (NZ has a population of 4 million people and 12 million sheep.)

Bay of Islands was excellent. We stayed in a beautiful little town with a name I can't remember. We decided we'd like to do an overnight Kayak trip, but we had no tent (and it's getting bloody cold around here.) Adam started talking to this guy named Peter, from Belgium. He had just finished a hike all the way across 90 mile beach, and said he had some gear he could lend us, free of charge. It turned out we were borrowing about 1000 dollars worth of camping equipment from this guy - he was pretty trusting.

We set off at the crack of 10:30. Considering we were kayaking on the sea, the water was fairly calm. But as I said, it was cold and windy. We spent some time discovering some lagoons, and around two-thirty, decided to cut our trip short, having only covered three quarters of our intended trip. No big deal! we dragged and hid the kayaks onshore (you're not supposed to camp on that island), and lugged out stuff onto the highest hill. The view was really unbeleivable, I won't waste my time describing it, you'll have to wait for photos. Anyway, a hard camping spot to beat. After a hearty meal of rice and soya sauce, followed withs some beer, it was off to bed. Luckily, there were three of us in a two man tent, so we didn't freeze to death. Fantastic trip!

Ok, that's bay of islands. I'll try to update more later, I've got to get off the computer for now.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Thomas

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