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BAY OF ISLANDS
The bus for Paihia (in the Bay of Islands) was leaving at 8:30am so we were up early that morning to catch it. The bus station was just up the road at Skycity with the SkyTower where we'd been the night before. But when we arrived there wasn't an InterCity bus to Paihia to be found. There was a Northliner bus to somewhere that stopped at Paihia on route, was that the same? I went to the ticket office to ask and got a surly b**** of a woman who said there was no InterCity bus to Paihia and that I must have booked the Northliner bus, not bothering to explain that the 2 are in fact the same company under different branding, how I was supposed to know this booking through the InterCity website I do not know, what I do know is that she had not had her coffee and was presumably in the middle of a messy divorce from a somewhat relieved husband.
Once in Paihia we found our way from the bus station along the beach road to the hostel road (they are quite literally all down this one road, although in fairness there aren't many roads in Paihia). We were staying at Base (standard) and the rooms were pretty funky each a little unit sleeping 8, with its own toilet and shower and little kitchenette/sink thing.
I then went in search of the local post office to post Petey's hat already sick of the bloody thing taking up valuable real estate in my bag for going on a week and a half now. So purchased an envelope, found Petey's address in the deep recesses of my phone just before dying on me and sent it away to be loved by a llama obsessed individual.
With the majority of Paihia's eating establishments closed by 2pm we settled on a nice Italian restaurant that we found open (and would close as soon as we left) and had pizza for lunch, whilst Lucy had some variation of pasta - the woman is obsessed. We then stocked up on a small number of groceries from the adjacent supermarket notably a fudge brownie cadbury's chocolate bar - a discovery that would forever alter the course of events to come (relating to grocery shopping). They have a LOT of varieties of cadburys in New Zealand, more than they do back home, and they come in a delightful array of flavours. Whilst in the country we would spend a large amount of money/time eating chocolate.
Having exhausted ourselves eating chocolate we went for a little nap and yet again another nap turned into sleep.
As a result of an early start on sleep however, I woke up at 4am again ridiculously horny (bus boy perhaps?). I tried finding any free wifi in the area on my Ipod (as I had done many times in South America) but whilst there were about 6 to choose from, they were all payable. We got an early english breakfast at a cafe at the pier, which was massive, much more than I care to eat before boarding a boat and got on our tour boat just before 9am. The boat was, alas, clearly a family friendly boat and not a party backpacker boat and there was in fact a very loud Indian family on board that were being assy to everyone - passengers and crew alike.
Our first stop was Russell, formerly Kororareka, and it was the first permanent European settlement in New Zealand. It started as a trading town between the Maoris and the Europeans, but as a result quickly end up with a reputation for prostitution and other vices. It is here that on February 6, 1840 that the UK would establish a British Governor for New Zealand. The place is pristine, as if it were out of a storybook or a 50s TV show, it doesn't look like its seen a scrap of litter since its inception. The grass was the greenest green, the houses were neat with picket fences. I have only once ever seen such a fairytale looking town and its the Disney built, run and operated town of Celebration and it verges on communism in its control over the population and its rules.
We left Russell for the next scattering of islands and by this point a large number of the Indian family were being sea sick which satisfied a large number of those on board for their previous rudeness.
We were shown the place where the first execution under British law was made against a Maori boy who had killed the estate keeper he worked for (for being an ass pretty much) and then killed the woman who owned the estate when she explained that whilst such a thing had been legal under Maori law this was no longer the case under British law and that she would have to get the appropriate authorities involved. Attempting to hide the evidence he cut the man and woman up and then burned the house down, but in doing so attracted the attention of the main landers who came ashore found what he had done and arrested him. He was given his sentence not only on the basis that he had murdered the man and woman, but that he had then gone about hiding the evidence of his crime, knowledge that he was aware such a crime was no longer legal under British law. It seemed a pretty peaceful place now.
We then sailed out towards the 'Hole in the Rock' which is a massive rock formation with a large cave eroded into it, thus the name, its actual name is in fact Cathedral Cave, but kiwis and backpackers alike prefer the colloquial. It was pretty cool, but the water level was too high to sail through it. The view around was awesome though, looking to the east there was nothing, but blue sea right up to the horizon and in fact if you sailed straight you'd come pretty close to where we'd left Chile a few days earlier, although obviously after a substantially longer journey.
We then got dropped off for an hour on nice sandy beach that the Indian kids insisted on running up and down whilst Lucy and I were sunbathing and b****ing about families and parents inability to control their children. I was happy though as Id taken the initiative to buy a beer before disembarking the boat - possibly the only place in all of New Zealand not to ID me.
Back in Paihia we enjoyed a delicious ice cream, well deserved considering it was scorching and I was slightly red before returning to base and perusing the internet before enjoying the free BBQ with drinks purchase that incorporated my love of burgers, coleslaw and beer. We sat and drank with our new flatmates - Joe, James and Rob, all 18 from England and starting uni in the summer - and got steadily drunk. The bar closed around 2am and we headed next door to Salty's (the best name for a little club if ever there was one) and had a dance for a bit before the boys got suitably bored and we opted to head back to the room.
The next morning we got up bright and early to catch the bus back to Auckland and the connecting bus to Rotorua, however, when we got there and the driver couldn't find us on the list, it transpired we'd accidentally booked the bus for Sunday, the next day. We tried to convince the woman to let us on anyway (since the bus was dead) but she was having none of it, the driver knew nothing of this conversation so we really should just have told him it was all sorted out and boarded the bus, but we were honest and plodded back to Base. We explained our situation to the woman at reception and she let us back into our old room since no one had cleaned it yet anyway. The boys assumed we'd slept in. The weather was unfortunately crap and so we spent most of the day on the internet uploading photos of South America, watching random TV shows and being astounded by the amount of commercials Richard Hammond appears in.
We decided to venture out of Base for dinner and found a funky bar that looked like it did some f***ing amazing burgers and steaks, but then they asked for ID despite the lack of an alcoholic beverage in our order and since we hadn't thought to bring them were asked to leave even though it was like 7pm in Paihia (the middle of nowhere). So we had to walk all the way back to the hostel to get it and then all the way back to the bar for it, but the food as we had suspected was awesome although possibly not worth the additional 30 minute walk. Regardless it became apparent no one was gonna serve us food without ID, ridiculously.
The following day we actually successfully boarded the bus back to Auckland, it was the same driver as the day before. When we took our rest stop half way to Auckland I went o buy a toastie, but was told that the 20 minutes we had was not ample enough time for it to be made (!?!) so got myself a scone instead - it was very tasty and an example of the englishness of New Zealand. When we got into Auckland we grabbed ourselves a Burger King and bought myself a card reader to upload photos in our hour between buses. Then we were back on the InterCity headed for Rotorua.
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