We left Mount Maunganui early I had my fingers crossed I had read the bus timetable right as I had to catch two buses today to get to my destination. Sure enough my second bus collected me in Thames and it turned out to be a mini bus, which was grand as it is so much easier to get to know people.

The driver was pretty good at doing the whole guided tour bit and we went and visited hot water beach, you can dig your own bath there and you'll get hot water once you have dug down enough - in some places 50C!! However the tide has to be right so you can access the bit where the hot water is and sadly the tide was in for us so we just ended up at the beach for 10 minutes before going on to our next destination!

We went to Cathedral Cove next which was beautiful, the weather was great and it was a pleasant 45 minute walk down to the cove (which was actually used int he film Narnia), there was a bit whole in the cliff / rock that seperated two absolutely stunning beaches - definately a great place to spend the day. However we had to hike back! The nice guide then took us on to some wine tasting at a "different" winery, they did all sorts of fruit wine - actually tasted a bit crap but it was a nice stop off and the group got to know each other a bit better after that!! We got into Whitianga and dumped our stuff as the bus driver took a load of us to the hot pools that htye have down the road from the hostel. We got a special discount but it was basically a luxury spa, where there were a number of different pools all with water pumped from below the ground (and cleaned I guess) there was waiter service into the pool with drinks and even shampoo and conditioner in the showers!! They did us a deal for dinner but what they actually did was hid us round the back so the normal customers couldn't see us and did one dish which we all had (beef vindaloo). A few people got a bit carried away on the drinks but I had a chocolate milkshake - much cheaper! After a thoroughly relaxing evening we headed back to the hostel and had a grand nights sleep (the hostel messed up my booking so I ended up being upgraded into a twin room with a rather pleasant girl from California).

The following day it was back to Auckland via Paeroa where I got to try the famous Lemon and Paeroa drink - quite nice! We stopped off the Auckland Harbour bridge (rather ugly) and did a bridge walk - where you walk a long the walkways under the bridge attached to a wire in case you somehow manage to get over the barriers and fall into the water! You can bungy jump there but it looked a bit crap to me. We got to the hostels about 2pm and I utilised my afternoon on the cheap internet (real slack effort from me I know).

The following day I headed to the Bay of Islands where I had three nights booked and very much looked forward to...