Driving up to the Bay of Islands was quite spectacular except for the torrential rain! Luckily though, five minutes before we arrived the sun broke through the clouds for the first time! Once we'd checked in to the hostel we walked around the very small town of Paihia which was beautiful and nice and quiet. After shopping for food we headed back to cook Tacos (a nice change from rice and pasta!!) and then had an evening stroll along the beach.

The next day we headed down to the maritime building to decided which Dolphin trip we were going to go on. We settled on one with Fullers which was a smaller boat so hopefully we could get closer to the Dolphins! After a quick lunch back at the hostel (beans on toast....! Come on we're on a budget here!) our boat set off in search of Dolphins!!.....Three hours later: nothing! Although the waters were calm the weather wasn't too great so we were set down on one of the islands to warm up with a cup of tea before heading back to land. As part of the deal we were allowed to go on another viewing trip for free so we booked ourselves on the one the next morning in the hope that this time we would see something!

Very early in the morning we set off again to board the boat to go look for Dolphins. However the weather was even worse than the day before! The sea was VERY choppy and it was raining constantly! Whilst waiting to depart there was a mayday call through to say a boat in the bay had capsized and the Coastguard were starting search and rescue, but we still set off in search of Dolphins anyway! A very sea sick three hours later we still hadn't seen anything (in fact we could barly see the sea we were on except when we were travelling over the huge waves!), and after a second mayday call came in from another capsized boat the skipper decided to call it a day! This time we decided to get what money back we could and call it a day rather than go back out the next day(I was rather green by this point!). We had a chilled afternoon waiting for the sea sickness to pass and the rain to stop, and then when it brightened up a little we looked around the souvenier shops, had an ice cream, cooked dinner and went out to taste the local beer!

On our last full day in New Zealand we caught the bus back to Auckland where we sorted out the problems with our plane tickets (a very long story!), checked into our hostel and had a last wander to the harbour. For tea we grabbed a pizza from Domino's (backpacker discount goes along way in New Zealand!) and then packed up ready for our penultimate flight!

The next day we had a late flight so we spent the morning looking around town, and had a nice relaxing coffee in starbucks before heading to the airport to catch a 12-hour flight to San Francisco, USA!