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So, just to finish off the rest of this week:
Tuesday night after the skydive we drove over to Waitomo, which is famous for its glowworm caves and black water rafting (tubing in the water in the caves). We were just booking up when this little loud blondie rushed over - Zara! She was there with Katie and Jim and we all went off to Curly's for a drink, which was really nice.
Wednesday: We went to Waitomo caves - i was a bit 'crook' so I just did a walking tour of the caves - boring! - but the glowworms and cave formations were pretty cool. Vicky and Amy did the black water rafting, which looked really fun, and think they enjoyed it. Even though there are eels in the cave water! We then left Waitomo and headed up to Paihia in the Bay of Islands, which is right towards the top of New Zealand, where we met Zara and Katie for dinner and drinks.
Thursday: We went on a cruise around the Bay of Islands (which I reckon aren't as amazing as everyone makes out). The cruise was well windy but nice to sail around. Too cold to swim with the dolphins though! We hopped out at a random island with a strange name and tried to go on a walk in the paddocks but it was closed, so instead we collected shells and wrote messages to our favourite doctors on the beach - photos to come! (we looked cool...) We sailed around a bit more and through the famous 'Hole in the Rock', which is basically a 15m hole in a big piece of rock in the sea. We hopped out again at Russell, which is the biggest island in the Bay, and according to Charles Darwin - the 'hellhole of the Pacific', where the 'refuse of society' hang out, prostitutes and drunks etc. I'm thinking it's changed a bit now... It's also the site of the first church of NZ so I took a pic of the others in the graveyard and told them all to say cheese - Amy decided to shout 'GRAVES!' instead. haha. We also went on a little walk along the rocks and up some hills, with Katie as the tour guide and me as the nature tour guide - even though I know absolutely nothing about nature, but I think I did a pretty good job - I made up loads of names of trees and plants and stories and I think they may have actually believed me. We saw (according to me) banana trees, gnarly trees, fork trees, many forked trees and lots of other nice naturey things.
That evening we all made dinner - bangers and mash for us three and some lamby stew for Za and Katie, and then settled down to watch 2 Lord of the Rings videos - don't laugh, it was actually really fun! Lots of chocolate dippage and drinkies and crisps and food and LOTR. How cool are we?! It was actually a really fun day, and no kayaking, woohoo!!
Friday: We drove down to Auckland today and dropped Charlie the car off. I have got to say - Auckland is THE BIGGEST DIVE! I really didn't like it at all. I'm a city girl and thought I'd love to be back in a city, with my favourite Starbucks, but no. Maybe I've 'found myself' in the last couple of weeks and stopped being so materialistic and got in touch with nature? Jim had recommended a 'nice' hostel for us, but it was actually a bunch of crap. Oh and there are LOADS of Oriental people and shops in Auckland - more than Caucasians, it was really bizarre! For my last night we had a Wagamama, adding a touch of Bristol to my special last night. Then we all went to sleep in the creaky, old rickety crap beds of the crap hostel.
Saturday is today! Happy Birthday Jeev and Meets! We wandered about Auckland this morning, to the Victoria Market, where they have 65 shops and cafes, a really great place to shop and one of the main areas apparently. And guess what? It was CRAP! Like, hilariously funny crap. And we saw our first proper NZ chav. Fun times. We couldn't be bothered to go up the Sky Tower, the one proper touristy thing there, so we then wandered up and found a Borders and another market where I bought some Indian tea and chatted to some real Indian people. Then I came back to the hostel and packed, early (sign of how crap Auckland actually is - which I accidentally went on about to the lady next to me on the plane, who then turned out to be from Auckland. Smooth)
So anyway, I left Auckland and New Zealand, trying my hardest not to keep Auckland as my last memory of NZ. NZ is seriously aamzing, especially the South Island - would definitely recommend going there - I'm not massively outdoorsy so I wasn't sure if I would like it, but without sounding too cheesy, I was blown away. It is awesome.
And now I'm in Sydney!
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