So 7.10am and Katie and I were ready to board the Kiwi Experience bus for the first time. Our driver was Dave and we set off north to Bay of Islands. After a breakfast stop, ham and cheese toastie mmmmmm, we eventually arrived in Bay of Islands just gone midday. We stopped at the information centre to pick up a map of the area, we're given a quick tour of the area on the bus and then were dropped off to check into our hostel, Pipi Patch Base.

Katie and I went for a wander around the town, (if you can call it a town!) and got some lunch and then collected our towels from the hostel and went and sat on the grass by the beach to chill out for a while. We ended up sitting and chatting to an English guy who was on our bus and would be for most of our trip. He is 20 and has been working in Australia for 18months. After a few hours we all decided to head back to the hostel. With a banging headache i had a sleep for an hour and so did Katie and then we got up and wandered back into town for dinner, where we had the most amazing fish and chips, (fresh fish from Bay of Islands itself, yummy!) from a place called Vinnies (really reminded me of home and i felt as though i should only be eating a cooked breakfast from Vinnies, weird seen as it wasn't christmas time!lol!). After dinner we went back to the bar at the hostel and met up with Jack and a couple of guys from his room, and then joined some girls from a different tour bus, Stray. We ended up having a real laugh that night and got on with everyone really well. It was definately a good start to our New Zealand travels.

Next morning we got up and checked out by 10am then decided to go and catch the ferry over to a little town called Russell as the bus back to Auckland was not until 3pm. Russell was the original capital of New Zealand and so we were quite looking forward to having a nose around. On arrival we realised that any excitement was wrongly placed as there is absolutely nothing there. Anything that was in Russell was already in Paihia the town that we were staying in! Anyway we managed to kill a couple of hours there looking around the couple of shops and circling the town about 3 times and having a drink in a nice little cafe. We then caught the ferry back to Paihia, picked up a fresh Subway roll and went back to the hostel and played uno until the bus left.

We arrived back in Auckland around 7pm and went and got another amazing salad from Habitual Fix and would have had an early night if it wasn't for the Canadian guy in our room who is actually incapable of being quiet! Wouldn't have minded so much if everything that came out of his mouth wasn't about Canada and also if he hadn't told us to put our books away so that we could switch the light off, and then carried on talking once the light was off!!!!! thank god we we're only sharing a room with him one night!