New Zealand so far, sweet as!

---

We arrived in New Zealand around 1:00PM and I hopefully heard the song ‘Tropical Dawn’ for the last time as we exited the plane! We got through immigration and grabbed our bags and boarded the airbus into Auckland City Centre around 2.10. The journey took around 40 minutes and dropped us right outside our hostel. We checked in and went to our room which was good. We were hungry so we went to a local Irish pub called Father Ted’s and had a Sunday carvery which was amazing! As we didn’t get much sleep the night before we tried to relax for the rest of the day, we did some stuff on the internet (including catching up with the inbetweeners, hilarious!) before going to bed after a long day!

We slept really well and got ready and ventured out into Auckland. We sorted our Magic Bus tickets which is the bus we are using to travel around New Zealand, before going into town. We found a bakery and I ordered the big breakfast which certainly lived up to it’s name! After a lot of rice and potatoes in Fiji the food here was a welcome change. In many ways New Zealand is a lot like England, the food is very similar and the weather is just as changeable! The people are very laid back and friendly. We grabbed some stuff from the supermarket, went for a drink and checked out a few shops before going back to the hostel for dinner. We watched a film in one of the TV rooms after dinner before having an early night, was a pretty quiet day but after the hectic day we had yesterday we felt we’d earned it!

The 12th marked our first full month of travelling although already it seems like we’ve been away for a lot longer as we’ve done so much already! We wrote some postcards and went for a drink before grabbing the free city circuit bus which takes you on a small loop of the city. We got off at Albert Park which was really nice in the sun and then went to look around the sky tower. We looked around the shops for a bit before coming back to the room. We found Auckland to be a bit chilly, but we think it was probably because Fiji and America were so warm as in reality it wasn’t that cold!

We were up early the next morning as the Magic Bus picked us up around 7:20AM and we headed towards Paihia which is north of Auckland. The journey was good our driver was cool, he told us of any points of interest along the way and stopped whenever he thought there was a decent photo opportunity. There was only six people on the bus so it was pretty quiet. We got to Paihia around midday and checked into our hostel. Our dorm room seemed good. We went to look around Paihia which had some good little souvenir and food shops before going to the supermarket for some supplies. We’d just finished our shop and it started throwing it down and we’d left our waterproofs at the the hostel! We got absolutely drenched on the way back. We dried off when we got back and watched Robin Hood, Men in Tights (Classic!) before having some dinner and going to the pub for a couple of drinks. We got talking to a guy and his mates and after a couple of drinks he’d offered to put us up if we were going to be in Southern Auckland at any time! Unfortunately it’s not in our schedule so we passed on his kind offer and headed home.

We went on a dolphin spotting trip the next day. The weather was great today, we were shown a few of the islands that make up the Bay of Islands (there are 144 in total) and learnt a bit of history about the ones we did see. We managed to see a group of dolphins and managed to get some good photos of them. We then went out to the hole in the rock which is exactly how it is described! Although it doesn’t sound much it’s pretty impressive. Unfortunately the conditions meant we couldn’t drive the boat through it but it didn’t matter as we managed to get some great photos. The trip lasted around four hours and we arrived back around 5:30. It was really relaxing and as it was booked in advance it meant all we had to do was turn up and we didn’t have to worry about getting tickets. We had a quick look around the farmer’s market before popping back to the hostel. We treated ourselves to a cheap steak meal at one of the local restaurants which was great and capped the day before coming back and going to bed.

The next morning we watched a couple of films and played a couple of games of connect 4. After lunch we boarded the ferry over to Russell, which used to be New Zealand’s capital. The ferry took around 20 minutes and once we arrived we had a look around. We took a walk up to one of the nature reserves but we didn’t go too far as Hayley’s choice of flip-flops weren’t suitable for the terrain! We went back into the town centre and went to the pub for a drink. Afterwards we went and had a look around the local church, which is the oldest in New Zealand before boarding the ferry back. It wasn’t until we were nearly back in Paihia that we realised we’d left Hayley’s rucksack in the pub! Luckily the ferryboat staff were really good and took us back free of charge. I got off and ran to the pub and it was exactly where we’d left it, a lucky break! We didn’t have any valuables in it but it would have been a pain to have lost it. We made our way back on the ferry (again!) and arrived back in Paihia at 7:20. We grabbed some dinner and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

We didn’t have a great nights sleep as it was very noisy and to be honest we didn’t do a great deal for the whole day. We watched a few TV shows in the morning (mainly house guest!) before lunch. After lunch we’d planned to go for a bike ride but the bike seats were really high and there was no way of adjusting them so we abandoned that idea and went for a walk around the town. We visited the local handicrafts market and visited the local fudge shop where we had to get a little bit of fudge, it was so good! We saw one of the guys we’d stayed with at the Beachouse in Fiji later on, small world! We had dinner and started watching a film in the lounge. It was getting good until the security guard cleared us out and we missed the end, gutted! We enjoyed our time here but we think 2-3 days would have been enough for us.

We were up at 7:00 the next morning, had breakfast and checked out before boarding the Magic Bus back to Auckland. On the way back we stopped off at Opononi where we watched a short DVD on a dolphin called ‘Opo’ who was a local celebrity in the 1930’s before moving onto the Waipoua Forest where we saw ‘Tane Mahuta’. Tane Mahuta is a giant Kauri tree which the Maori tribe find deeply spiritual. After a few photos we carried on before stopping at Matakohe Kauri and Pioneer Museum where we had a drink and I made a new friend in the form of a cat! We arrived back in Auckland around 2:15 and checked in. The long bus journeys have meant I’ve actually done some reading I’m currently very into Andre Agassi’s autobiography which is a fantastic read, Hayley is waiting for Russell Brand’s new one to be released overseas! We had a wander around town before having some dinner and doing some laundry and tried to have an early night.

Some girl arrived in our room and started tapping on her computer until 4:00AM and refused to stop even when I asked her, selfish idiot! For that reason I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We were up around 6:00 and the Magic Bus picked us up around 7:40. They took us to the top of Mount Eden where we could see over the whole of Auckland. As we left Auckland the drivers seemed happy to be leaving, we’ve learnt the rest of New Zealand don’t like Auckland for some reason! We had a drink stop off at Thames before making a flying visit to Paeroa where they make the famous L and P (Lemon and Paeroa) drink, we bought a can and it was very tasty! We then moved onto Shire’s Rest, which is also known as Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings movies. They’re currently in the process of filming a new one. We fed some sheep and some lambs before playing a game to win some beer used in the movies. We lost but I tried some, it was horrible! It may have something to do with it only being 1% alcohol but it didn’t taste great! We had some lunch before setting off for Rotorua.

We arrived around 2PM and visited the local Maori centre where we received a Maori welcome and sampled a couple of foods they eat and Hayley won a book for answering a question correctly. We then went to our hostel and checked in, our room was nice and the staff were friendly. We did some shopping before going for a walk around Lake Rotorua. A volcano erupted here many years ago and as a result there are high levels of sulphur in the air. The sulphur in the air has led to Rotorua being home to many thermal areas and there are many bubbling and steaming mud and water pools around the town. The town also has a weird smell due to the sulphur but the pools and the lake are an impressive sight. We had a look around Kuirau park before coming back for dinner. We then visited the Polynesian Spa which was so relaxing. There were seven hot pools varying in temperature for us to relax or swim in and it was open air. As the night was clear we could just relax under the stars and it was really peaceful. A couple of hours passed quickly and we returned to the hostel and went to bed.

The bus picked us up at 8:30 and took us to the Government buildings in Rotorua and then to the bubbling mud pools. We were then shown the Lady Knox geyser which spurted water (with a little help from a soap substance) around 15-20 metres into the air which was a really impressive sight. We then went to Huka Falls where we took some pictures before transferring to another bus to go and do our skydive! We decided which package we both wanted but unfortunately the sky clouded over and after waiting a couple of hours they put it back to later in the day so they dropped us at our hostel in Taupo and we checked in. Hostel wasn’t great, service was a bit poor and there were no lockers or mirrors in the room. We went to a local Irish bar where we caught up with the football highlights and they rang the skydive company for us again. It was still too cloudy to go so we rebooked for tomorrow in the hope the weather would clear up. We had some dinner and entered the pub quiz with a few people from our bus. It was about as hard as the red lion quiz back home but we managed to get 21 out of 50 and Hayley and I won some free drinks!

We woke around 8:30 and looked out of the window to be greeted by rain and grey skies, so we weren’t hopeful about our jump. We had some breakfast and went downstairs and found out the jump was on! The weather had cleared up and the sky overhead was clear. We were picked up and taken back to the airport . We weren’t overly nervous, I think having it cancelled the day before meant we just wanted to do it and that countered the nerves, although after waiting for a short while a bird flew into the wall we were standing near and killed itself, not what we wanted to see! We then met our dive masters, mine was Albert from Germany and Hayley’s was Ian from Wales. They had completed over 19,000 jumps between them and they made us feel at ease. We had our overalls and harnesses on and we boarded the plane. It seemed to take ages to reach 15,00 feet but we finally did and it was time to jump! I was second out of the plane, AMAZING! The free-fall was incredible I think I screamed the whole way down! It was such a rush of adrenaline and the views were amazing. Hayley was last off and we both loved every second. After a minute and five seconds of free-falling and reaching speeds of no less than 200km/h the parachute was pulled and we floated down. It was so peaceful as we floated down to the ground and we tried to take everything in before we both landed safely. We ran to each other and gave each other a massive hug, it was such a thrill and an incredible experience. We received a DVD, photos and a t-shirt as part of our pack which was really good. The company we used were great and we were so glad we were able to do our jump over Lake Taupo as it was our first choice. An awesome morning!

We got dropped back at the hostel where we went through the photos of our morning before having lunch. The adrenaline rush from the jump had left us exhausted so we had a quiet hour before going for a walk along Lake Taupo where there are some great views of the mountains and the lake before having a game of crazy golf (I played like a young Nick Faldo!) It was good fun and then we went to the Irish Bar nearby to celebrate our successful jump! We found the staff in the bar to be really friendly and welcoming and after dinner went back for a couple more drinks. When we got home we watched our jump DVD with a hot chocolate, what a day!

Laid in until around 10:30 today and didn’t do much this morning. After lunch we went for a walk up to the Spa Park and then walked along the banks of the Waikato river which was really picturesque and we also checked out the natural thermal river they have there. Afterwards we came back to the hostel and relaxed. We leave tomorrow for the National Park. We’ve enjoyed our time in New Zealand’s north island so far and we have plenty to look forward to in our last few days here and then when we travel to the south island next week! Sweet as!

---