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Hello all,
hope you are all well!! I've made it to auckland in one piece!! ha ha From wellington we went north to a place called taupo where i did a 15,000 feet sky dive. It was awesome, the best thing i have ever done in my life. It was a much nicer feeling that the nevis bungee jump i did in queenstown. The bungee was more of a scary adrenalin rush but the sky dive was much more enjoyable with fantastic scenery. I have bought the dvd package so i will be able to show u all when i get home.
From there we went to a place called rotorua where we attended a formal mairee welcoming, it was quite a experience. We went down to the mairee village on a coach pretending it was a boat as a warrior tribe. One of the lads on the coach was nominated as chief of our tribe and had to meet the mairee chief and perform the correct welcoming procedure. We had to take the meet very seriously otherwise we would not be aloud to enter the village. We were not aloud to laugh or show our teeth to the mairy's because this was regarded as a sign of disrespect and aggression towards them. It's sounds quite straight forward but when you are there and they are jumping around waving spiers/sticks and sticking there tongue out in your face making the most bizzare noises it's harder than what u think not to laugh! A lad from one of the previous groups found the welcoming very fuuny and was head butted in the mouth and had all his teeth knocked out by one of the mairess's!!
The welcoming went really well and we were allowed into the village where they gave us a brief history of how they lived/weapons! etc Then we were fed a massive meal whcich was very delicious. They had absolutely everything e.g pork, chicken, beef, salads, veg, potatoes, chocolate cake, jelly and a bar which came in quite usefull!! ha ha We could eat as much as we wanted which was even better!!lol
We stayed in Rotorua for 3 nights, the place has the most discusting smell of eggs, it's sulphur that comes up from the earths crust!! Despite the smell It was a great place, the hostel had great facilities, heated swimming pools/spa's etc.. Me and the lads went for a game of golf, only 9 holes. We lost all the golf balls and tee's but we had a great time!!
We then moved onto auckland for one night and made our way up to the bay of islands to a place called paihia which is a 3 hr drive north from auckland. I had a great time here, rather than taking part in the activites provided by kiwi experience me and my fellow backpackers decided to hire mountain bikes for the day and went on a 15k cycle. It was so much fun, the scenery was amazing, green fields and rainforests with dirt tracks running through them with swamps and rivers and waterfalls. It is very different to that on the south island. The south island is more mountainerous and the north is much more flat.
We went cycling down a track and there had been a land slide which was extremely slippery with a cliff drop. We all got full of clay and mud getting across and had to hose down the bikes and ourselves!! ha ha
I spent 2 nights there and came back to auckland and had to say good bye to my australian mate "blake" who i had been travelling with throughout new zealand who i met in the south island. It was sad to see him go cus we got on so well and had spent so much time together. My 2 other irish friends that i met at the same time as blake are due to go 2day to china, so i'm going to be on my tod till i fly to LA on wed. Think i'm going to chill out and have some time to myself and sort all my little jobs out and catch up with sum sleep from all these early morning starts and late nights i have been having. New zealand has been so much fun, and i would recoment kiwi experience to anyone!!
take care and i will post when i get to la or maybe in the nxt few days once i have been up aucklands sky tower. Unfortunately my camera has been damaged so i am relying on my freinds to tag me in on photo's. I have uploaded all of the ones i have taken in new zeland, have fun browsing through them.
Jimmy
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