Bit of a combination of blogs this time! We left Wellington on 01/08/11 and spent the entire day travelling – an express bus to Auckland. We checked into Nomads (we officially hate Nomads now by the way) and got to meet up with Jan one last time for a drink – was great seeing you again mate…until next time in Belfast, Hamburg or Prague haha!! We also got meeting our new bus driver, Kerry, who was having a few whiskeys in the bar – he seems like a proper laugh, should be good with him for the next few days!!

Our first day on the new bus with Kerry was fairly uneventful. We did have a much bigger coach which was great – everyone on the bus had 2 seats each…at last a bit of room for travelling! We ended up in Raglan that night – a really cool little surf town. When we arrived at our hostel I went to bed for a kip – I was still feeling pretty rubbish and Laura and the rest of the bus went into town to explore a bit. That night we got to know each other a bit better over a group dinner – Lamb Steaks BBQ’d to perfection by Kerry and a few drinks, Lemsip for me, to wash ‘em down!! Everyone on the bus seemed really dead on so a good start to the 2nd half of the NZ adventure.

Next day we were off to Maketu for our cultural visit at Uncle Boy’s Place but first we had a stop off at the Waitomo Caves for an afternoon of caving!! We both booked onto different trips – Laura went for the Tumi Tumi Tubing which involved swimming in the caves, tubing (floating down the river in a rubber ring in the pitch black) and trying to squeeze through extremely tight cave spaces which took a lot given she isn’t comfortable in confined spaces – good on ya!! I went for the Haggis Honking Holes trip which was class – I abseiled down 3 waterfalls, swam through waterfall pools, climbed up rock faces and commando crawled through super tight tunnels – it was brilliant and bloody freezing but well worth the money! We got showered, dried off and back on the bus on the way to Maketu.

The cultural visit was something we had both really been looking forward to since we found out about it and we weren’t disappointed. Uncle Boy (leader of the local tribe) was really welcoming but pretty scary too – he explained that he had no time for wall flowers and if you weren’t going to get involved then we could go and get back on the bus now..…..I guess we were getting involved then!! He explained to us that we had to take everything very seriously and we were essentially an enemy tribe until we were challenged (by a young tribe member performing a war dance in front of our chief – Dan from Germany), then welcomed into his Marae (traditional Maori meeting place) and accepted as part of his very very large extended family - 2 buses a week join ya know!!! We watched the locals perform a number of songs, dances and Haka’s before it was our turn to learn! The girls stayed in the main hall, got their traditional dresses and costumes and learned to dance the Poi. The guys were taken next door, told to strip off to their underwear and put on the traditional beaded skirts (doesn’t sound very manly – see photos, it wasn’t) and were shown in 20 minutes the moves to the Ka Mate Haka along with the words – this should be fun!! We were then presented in front of the girls, and the local college group, to perform the Haka – oh my god what a shambles!! Not only could we not remember any of the movements for it but the words in Maori were impossible to pronounce so we basically each individually made up the world’s worst, most unintimidating Haka - all doing different things of course! We did put a lot of effort in – Irish Dan in particular almost making his legs bleed from slapping them that hard, it was some laugh!!

Next up were the girls who performed the Poi for us – much more organized and impressive than ours with my wee Poi dancer winning the star of the evening for the best performance…..I certainly wasn’t winning one of those for my Haka!! Once all the performing was over we had a few drinks and chilled out before bed – it really was a brilliant night.

Off to Taupo tomorrow – we’re getting through the North Island at some rate!!

Craig and Laura = )