Hey everyone!

Firstly, sorry for the lack of blogs but once you get through this one you will understand why! I started the Kiwi Experience last Monday and literally haven’t stopped!! Finally got a chill out day today so catching up with everything!

Right, I will start from the beginning! Last Monday (23rd) I got picked up for my Kiwi Bus to head up to Paihia- a nice early start of 5.30am to get the bus into the city! Unlike the Oz experience, the Kiwi bus does a lot more for you so once I was on the bus all I had to do is write my name down a few times to say where I wanted to stay and what activities I wanted to do! I decided to do the boat cruise and then after chatting to some of the girls around me, also decided to do sky diving! It wasn’t a difficult decision as not only is it the cheapest in NZ, but also the highest at 16,000 ft!! We got into Paihia about 11.30am and just had time to grab some lunch before getting picked up for the sky diving! There were 6 of us who decided to jump that afternoon and luckily we had amazing weather! Once we got there we got kitted up by our tandom masters and everyone at the place was amazing!! The first three, which included me, soon headed out to the plane! It was a tiny plane and the three of us plus our masters were pretty squashed!! The plane ride was about 20mins to get us up to 16,000ft and as you can imagine the views of the Bay of Islands were amazing! The only downside was that it was freezing-the plane only had a plastic slide door and it let a lot of air in!! Apparently it was about -16C up at the top! I was the second to jump out and although I was slightly nervous it only hit me once I was dangling out the plane! Because we are strapped to the front of our master you have a few seconds of being outside the plane before he lets go!! It’s the most amazing feeling once you are out of the plane though and it doesn’t actually feel as though you are falling!! The ground is so far away that it doesn’t seem to be getting closer! We got over 60 seconds of freefall before my master got the parachute up!! From there it was nice and easy, admiring the view and doing a few spins with the parachute!! Unfortunately it wasn’t long before we were back on dry land!! All of us just wanted to go back up again! We watched the next lot go up and were very jealous!! I would definitely recommend it to everyone-it was such a brilliant day!!

On the way back, Andy our driver took us to a small waterfall that was near to Paihia, which was beautiful and even better, when we were there, there was a rainbow that landed right at the bottom of the fall!! No pot of gold though  In the evening, we had a lush BBQ at the hostels bar, and watched our diving dvds on the bar tv!! They are amazing and I can’t wait to show you all!!! We ended up taking part in a pub quiz which was hilarious and ended up winning some free drinks for our picture with the theme under the sea!!

One the Tuesday, some of us headed up to Cape Reinga which is at the very north of New Zealand! It ended up being a day spent mainly on the bus but we had a few good stops! The first was the Puketi Kauri forest which has got trees that are hundreds of years old and have absolutely huge trunks! Latr in the day we visited a shop that sold furniture that had been carved out of some of these types of trees, an they were all beautiful but cost a fortune!! Our next stop was on 90mile beach! Infact it’s not 90 miles but it used to be called that before they could accurately measure it and the name stuck! The weather had turned a bit nasty by now so we didn’t spent too much time on the beach but we did drive along most of it! Once we got off the beach we stopped at some nearby sanddunes to do some sand boarding!! It was hard work walking up to the top because for every 2 steps you took the sand carried you back one!! Eventually we were at the top (with some sore calf muscles!) and got to fly own them!! You go down on body boards and use your feet to steer!! Its pretty scary coming down but so much fun!! One tip though is to keep your mouth shut as the sand went everywhere!! Next stop was the lighthouse at Cape Reinga! It’s a cute little lighthouse with a look out over both the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean and you can actually see where the two meet!! In the Mauri Culture, this place is where the spirits go to pass over to the after life!! It’s a very peaceful place and is absolutely beautiful! Then it was time for a nap on the bus as we headed back to Paihia!

In the evening I ended up going to some hot springs nearby with Adam, Ben and Lucy! I had met them all through one of the guys at my Auckland hostel on Saturday night and they live in Paihia! The springs were all natural and absolutely stunk of rotten eggs!! Because they are natural the temperatures varied depending on what pool you get in! We started off in just a water pool, which was very hot but soon moved over to the mud pools! Here we could pick the mud up from the bottom of the pool and put it on our skin! After about half an hour it dried and you could wash it off!! Definitely the cheapest therapy I’ve had!! It was a very funny night and lovely to sit in a hot pool under the stars!!

On the Wednesday, I went and did a boat trip with Annabel who was on the Kiwi Bus! Unfortunately as the weather was bad, we couldn’t get out to the Hole in the Rock, but we did get to go around the Bay of Islands, which include 144 small islands! We were also lucky enough to spot some dolphins! We came across a pod of about 6-8, but unfortunately there was a baby dolphin in the pod so we couldn’t swim with them! However they were beautiful to watch and they came up so close to the boat! I got a bit snap happy and took about 500 photos but you will be glad to know that only about 100 of them will be on facebook as the rest were just of the sea!! One the way back we stopped off for lunch at a cute little café in the town of Russell, which is known as the Hellhole of the Pacific!! Luckily it was nice when we went and the café even served something calle ‘Beckys Brekky’!!

In the afternoon, I went on a walk to the waterfall with Annabel and Mali, another girl from the bus! It ended up being a 15km walk but was worth it to see the falls again! On the way out it was through a forest but easy going!! We decided to use it as training for the Tongariro Crossing (more about that later!) The way back was unfortunately along the road and in NZ, they aren’t big fans of pavements! It wasn’t ideal and about 2km out a guy offered us a lift back into town!! As it was about to rain we decided it was a good idea and got dropped off at the supermarket!! It was Mali’s birthday so we treated ourselves to chilli and a crumble for pudding!! In the evening we headed out to a local bar with some live music! It was a small bar but some of the people James (another guy from the bus) had been scuba diving with recommended it!! It was an awesome night with plenty of champagne to celebrate Mali’s birthday!!

On Thursday, it was back down to Auckland! Our bus picked us up at 3pm but unfortunately it was raining all day so we couldn’t do much except sit and watch dvds! The coach journey back was pretty easy and we all checked into Base hostel! We all headed out to Nandos for some food and got to know our room mate for the night!! She had just flown in from Canada so we tried to persuade her to do the Kiwi Bus!! We got vouchers for a free drink at the hostel bar so headed there for the free drink and a good old boogie!!

That’s about it for this blog as that was the end of the ‘Top Bit’ section of my bus!! Another update o follow with the latest info!!

For now though, sending lots of ‘sweet as’ love

xxxx