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Ok soo i'm quite behind now! i will see what i can remember from the Bay of Islands because it feels like yonks ago!
I started my travelling in New Zealand and got to my first hostel Base Auckland, by far the worst hostel i've stayed in so far! I was booked in for an 8 bed dorm but found myself in a 4 (which you think would be a good thing) the room itself was pretty dirty and really really hot! I was sharing the room with an aussie guy, british guy and a german guy. fine me and 3 guys, doesnt really bother me. What bothers me is the drunken german guy playing his music on his laptop all night, he did turn it down wen we asked at least. But i do not appreciate turning over in my bed (i was on top bunk) to find him standing at the bars looking at me. WHAT?! first time he was just trying to ask me how i was doing? errrrr yea im fine what the F are you doing?! you frightened the life out of me! and then at 4am after still not sleeping due to him being annoying and also the room being too hot i'm finally falling asleep, roll over and hes standing there having climbed on the bottom bunk to get better height is watching me, so i roll over and come face to face with him, freak out and he continues to ask if he can sleep in my bed. NO GO AWAY YOU WEIRDO! luckily the aussie guy was like MATE WTF leave her alone! and he did leave me alone. so i got an hours sleep before gettin up to shower and check out at 6.45 to meet the kiwi experience bus. So far my experience in NZ hasnt been great...
Altho saying that luckily enough a girl i was sharing a room with in sydney also happened to be staying in base that night and we had had a wander round and found an awesome chinese restaurant, which when we returned after the bay of islands i took my new friends to (haha i think i found myself some friends?! mental).
Ok so the bus up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands which is North of North island, New Zealand. Bus was pretty empty but met charlotte (from reading), Miranda (from NW London) and Holly (Croydon) and we seemed to have formed a lil group of friends which has been nice. As you can see i have come half way round the world and have made friends with people within an hours distance from home in bromley...how does this happen?!
We passed a sheep farm where the sheep are bred to be bright pink!!! literally the most amazing thing ever! When we reached Paihia we booked in at Pipi Patch Base Hostel which was quite nice altho the weather was really horrible! raining and cold! But charlotte, holly and myself went off for a 2 and half hour horse trek. The horses were very cute but the trek was too long, it was actually kind of boring, even the horses were bored! We thought the scenery would be amazing but we walked through forestry areas which have been cut down and were pretty ugly to see. So horse riding was a bit disappointing and we all spent the next few days with very painful bums and legs! I think we all ended up in bed at like 10pm knackered! poor sem and dan went to bed early too coz we were all like BED! and we had to get up early to go on the cape reinga trip!
Our bus driver Craig was soooo funny and had the most amazing stories for us on the way up to the most northern part of NZ north island. we learnt all about mrs kiwi and mr kiwi and how mrs kiwi lays eggs a 3rd of the size of her body! OUCH. and how there used to be MASSIVE chickens about 30kg in weight but they are now extinct :( how amazing would that have been!! Our first stop on the way up north was at a Puketi Kauri Forest where they have trees thousands of years old and they are massive! We made it to Cape Reinga where it was really cold and raining and you couldnt see much but walked to the light house at the tip that looks over the point where the Pacific meets the Tasman Sea. It supposed to be a spiritual place for the Maori people apparently. From there we went to Taputaputa beach (haha i only remember that name because of puta) it was freezing and the current was really really strong! oh and it was raining but we still went in!
We then headed over to the sand dunes for sandboarding/boogieboards down the dunes! Seeing how flipping high the dunes were and how terrifying it was, and my feet being so burnt i decided i was better off watching (haha chicken!! didnt feel i was missing out tho so its all good) The sand was pretty hard from the rain so lots of speed for people! and people were flying all the way across the "road" adn into the bushes on the other side! After this we headed to ninety mile beach for people to wash the sand off! The water was kind of warm (compared to the air outside) so we enjoyed a quick swim there before driving all the way down the beach because it turns out ninety mile beach is infact Highway 1a! and its also NOT ninety miles, they measured it wrong, its something like 64miles.. so pretty close.. err... Anyway we stopped off on the way back at NZs famous fish and chips shop and we had some fish and chips, the fish was alright, didnt taste fishy and i had ketchup so its all good!
In the evo we had a fun game of ring of fire!! haha two other girls in our room came back around 10ish so we moved our game unsuccessfully to the hostel bar where we just ended up drinking to every card that was picked up! All being successfully tipsy+ we decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the bay! so we changed into our swim stuff and ran down the road to the beach and into the water! i remember the water being warm, but apparently it wasnt, i think my memory is slightly altered thanks to the vodka lemon and limes (yummmm). Following that we all got in the hot tub and left pretty quickly after 2 weirdo guys got in. For some reason the four of us girls thought it was a good idea to get in the shower together and proceeded to squish ourselves in the the tiny shower and move round in a circle so everyone could get some water! meh it was fun at the time!
Needless to say we werent feeling great in the morning.. i felt awful! haha thank god our bus back to auckland wasnt leaving till 3.45pm or something. We had to go to the info centre in town to get our money back because we were supposed to be going on a dolphin cruise and swimming with the dolphins but thanks to mr cyclone the weatehr was awful and it was cancelled. In a way thats quite good because being on a majorly rolling boat would not have gone down well! We told Dan (a random guy we made friends with in our room but not on kiwi) to come to auckland and that we were staying in Nomads and we shud meet up there! When we got to nomads in auckland we realised there were two and we had sent him to the wrong one! oops! After getting a chinese for dindins (yumm) me and miranda went for a little walk and literally just happened to walk into him on our travels!! how unlikely/ lucky!! so we walked round the harbour with him and got blown away by the stupidly strong winds! oh and forgot to mention on the bus ride home how the fields had been flooded and cows were stranded which is quite funny!
So that was my trip to the Bay of Islands!
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