Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Fri 2 Feb
Arrived at the Nomads Fat Camel hostel at about 1.30am to find our lovely dingy twin room with no window - so tired I could sleep anywhere though! Got up and moved room to an 'apartment' style dorm which wasn't much better but we're here to see Auckland anyway not sit in a dorm thankfully! Grabbed some breakfast then went on the 'Stray' bus orientation tour of Auckland. First stop was the Sky tower - the guide pulled a name out of his pocket and twenty minutes later someone from the bus was jumping off the tower ..... glad it wasn't my name pulled from the hat, he seemed to enjoy it though! We then drove to the top of a volcano, pleased to report it is extinct now though. Nice views of Auckland and a nice flower garden and monument to an ex-Australian Prime Minister (strange considering the friendly rivalry between the Oz & Kiwi's). We then had a walk around Auckland harbour - Auckland is known as the 'City of Sails' and apparently has the highest boat to person ratio in the world. We then headed up Mount Eden, another extinct volcano with amazing views over the whole of Auckland and the two oceans on either side. We then headed to a pub and had our first pint of Speights, one of the big beers over here, no doubt the first of many! After that we headed to the 'Stray' office - we have decided to do a hop on, hop off bus tour of New Zealand with them so we will see how that goes.
Sat 3 Feb
Our first day with Stray, the bus was late and we thought they'd forgotten us! It eventually turned up and we started our journey north to Pahia and the Bay of Islands. It turned out to be a long drive but we stopped along the way at a kauri tree reserve, breakfast stop in Warkworth, and a picnic lunch at Goat Island Marine Reserve. We arrived in Pahia, checked into The Mousehole, a nice hostel only five minutes away from the seafont and later headed to the hostel/bar opposite for a BBQ with some of the others on the bus.
Sun 4 Feb
An early start as I was on a dolphin watch/swim boat that left at 7.45am. Ed went on a boat tour of the Bay of Islands (there are around 150 islands in total). The boat cruised around for almost two hours looking for dolphins whilst we froze inside! We eventually found a few different pods of dolphins, they were all spread out though so difficult to say how many we saw. We watched them from the boat for about 30 mins then the crew broke the news that there was a baby dolphin with them so we were not allowed to get in the water with them. This was pretty disappointing but it was still good to see them swimming and jumping right in front of the boat. I met Ed for lunch then we had a walk to the Treaty House at Waitangi. This is where the Waitangi Treaty was signed in 1840 - an agreement between the Maouris and the European settlers. It was interesting to read about the history of New Zealand and a shame we were only here for a few days as the national holiday 'Waitangi Day' is in a few days and there are big celebrations here. Anyway, we saw the original house that was occupied by the British man in charge at the time (forgotten his name sorry!), the flagpole erected to mark the spot where the treaty was signed, a Maouri canoe. Later got the Stray bus back to Auckland where we had a walk around the city and had some very expensive Belgian beer.
- comments