in melbourne now, so this is now almost 2 weeks behind, catching up tho! turned up in auckland bout midday after a pretty gay flight, mainly cos the only film on was firehouse dog, not ideal. once again we had failed to organise anything beforehand, although this time it didn't really pay off like usual. basically because we had to be in auckland in 3 days time to meet up with williams again the plan was to hire a car down to rotorua, spend a night there, go back to auckland, head north for a couple of days then back to auckland for our flight to the south island. however we soon discovered that trying to hire a car at airports is a really bad idea, they love whacking on hidden charges and basically trying to screw u over, so after about an hour negotiating with all the rental companies we gave up and went to look into getting the coach. however this also didnt pay off as new zealand public transport is really gay expensive and slow, so we eventually decided to cut our losses and stay in auckland for a few days. by all accounts rotorua isn't that great anyway, its famous for geysers and hot springs etc, but the family we met in raratonga were from there and said its just really smelly and expensive. also the bus driver on the way into town advised us against going to "rotten-rua" as it bloody stinks, and is full of theiving maori scum who try and steal all your money. he also suggested we go to the south island, as its got loads of hot girls to keep you warm. animal.

on top of our transport woes, i was having a mare with my eye, it started getting red and itchy in cook islands and by this time it was really swollen and painful and, combined with a big mosquito bite on my cheek, made me look like i'd just survived a couple of rounds with ricky hatton. on the plus side this reduced the number of fit girls following me around so i could get a bit of peace and quiet, but it wasn't that useful for things like seeing things and having any fun. ended up having to pay 40 quid to see a doctor and get some eye drops, nightmare. its all better now tho so all good. so anyway we booked into the base hostel in auckland, which lonely planet described as "big, lively, and lacking personality." we thought this sounded pretty similar to us, so we would fit in quite well. its a pretty obscene place, basically a big concrete tower block with like 500 beds, got a cheap double room with a fridge and a view of the city though, pretty sweet. also, had barely arrived when we bumped into the two idiots we shared a room with in LA, couldnt beleive it! they had just been to vegas and blown all their money, and were spendng a few days playing online poker before going to queenstown in a camper to spend even more money. had quite a funny chat then got rid of them asap.

auckland is a pretty nondescript city, not an awful lot to do so we went for the old interrailing tactic - drink lots of beer in the room, walk round in circles for a bit, go up the sky tower, go to the port and get the cheapest ferry ticket to somewhere. this turned out to be devenport, was just like an english seaside town complete with wind, rain, stony beaches and dodgy fish and chips places. since its winter here the weather was pretty poor, loads of wind and rain, just like home. so basically just killed time in auckland, had quite a lot of fun in the end tho and met some random people, including a big irish bloke from cork who was completely unintelligible, he was speaking to us for like 3 hours and we could only just establish that he liked drinking and rugby, couldnt make out any other words. finally williams turned up and we pulled ourselves together again, hired a cheap car and drove up to the inventively named bay of islands, cruised through some pretty nice countryside and the radio seemed pretty keen on good hard rock, loved it.

as the name suggests, bay of islands is a big bay with loads of islands in it. clever that. found ourselves an awesome hostel with a tv, gym and free towels, which made tpo very happy as he hasn't brought a towel and hadn't showered for about a week. paihia is a really small town with a not a lot to do, but we had an awesome time driving round the surrounding countryside. got a cruise round the bay the next day, weather was cold and rainy again, yaaaay, scenery was pretty spectacular still and we got to see some dolphins! they were really cool and followed the ship for a bit, we would have been able to swim with them but it turned out there were some babies in the pod so we weren't allowed to. gutted. interestin dolphin facts - dolphins spend 75% of their time socialising and mating, and the remaining 25% sleeping and eating. not a bad lifestyle. also they sleep by turning of one side of their brain and keeping the other side on, then switch over, so they can still keep mating and socialising. stormer. also williams was adamant that he saw a penquin, but we were pretty sure it was just a seagull.

drove back to auckland the next day where we spent another night at base and had a bit of bender, some of you may have been lucky enough to get some witty and inspired facebook messages that night, then got an internal flight down to christchurch the next day. quite impressed how i've managed to write so much about not really doing anything, probably really boring. keep reading though, south island entry will be loads more interesting. well.......

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