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Auckland
We left for Auckland on 20th Feb and arrived on the 22nd Feb at 4am in the morning, loosing a whole day! We were both tired but also VERY excited to be somewhere new and English speaking. It took a while to get through Immigration and Customs as our walking boots had to be checked (they are very strict about bringing in food or seeds of any kind). We hung around the airport for a bit until it got light and then headed to Auckland city centre by bus.
We stayed in Hotel Formula 1 (Matt loved the name!!) which was really good as we had our own kitchen in our room. We couldn't wait to cook some of our favourites after eating out for 6 weeks… like Chile, Curry and Fajitas!
By coincidence Christie and Beth (2 friends we had made from the Inca Trail Trip) were in Auckland at the same time so we met up with them! We actually arranged to meet for lunch but ended up bumping into each other in the morning anyway… so instead we headed to 'Kelly Tarlton's Underwater Adventure' together. We saw HUGE rays, sharks, lots of fish and penguins that were in real snow! It was so much easy to get around the city as we no longer had the language barrier, but needless to say the bus still didn't stop where we thought it was going to…
We did the 'city walk' which was in our guide book… it was great to see all the different parts of the city. Auckland has quite a few parks one of which had a display of Chinese lanterns. We also headed up the Sky Tower, apparently the highest tower in the Southern hemisphere. You got great views of the city from here, and off into the harbour. Some mad people decide to jump from the top of the Sky Tower, one of which we saw. Stomach turning stuff!
We also took a ferry from the harbour across to Rangitoto, a volcanic island in the Hauraki Gulf. We walked to the summit which was really nice, with lots of volcanic landscapes (black rock) and forest areas. There were some lava caves which we explored, walking right through them and out the other side. Bit scary! At the summit we had lunch and got to see the whole of Auckland city and several other islands dotted around us. Walking back down was a lot easier, and we chilled out by the water before the ferry picked us up to take us back (this was the last ferry of the day… we would have been sleeping there if we had missed it!).
The scariest bit of Auckland for Emily was Canyoning… she was VERY nervous but it was actually REALLY good. The 'dude' who we were doing it with picked us up from the Sky Tower for our 40min drive to the Piha valley where we would be doing it. We both got kitted up in wetsuits, trainers, helmet and harnesses and hiked to the top of the valley in this gear…it was HOT! We both did 3 jumps into the river from high rocks, and 4 abseils. The longest abseil was 50m, and one of them was down through a waterfall. It was A LOT of fun! This was our last day in Auckland before we got the Magic bus to Rotorua on the 27th Feb…
Waitomo
On the way to Rototua our bus stopped off at Waitomo for us to visit the caves famous for their glow worms (and you thought we had seen enough of them in Peru!) We took a boat ride through the cave system, with the glow worms above us looking like a very starry sky. It was very pretty. After our stop here we got back on the bus for our destination Rotorua…
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