DAY 2 - AUCKLAND TO PHALIA, BAY OF ISLANDS well the tour all kicks off today. catch the coach, seems a reasonable bunch on the tour. half the people have already been touring for the last 13 days and only have 2 days left. they are telling us how great the whole tour is, all boding well so far. we cross the harbour bridge, the bridge is pretty unimpressive appart from the fact they added extra lanes by clipping them onto the edge of the existing bridge. the harbour itself is fairly impressive. much bigger than any other i have seen. We stop at a nice little town so we can grab some brekkie. before we move on to visit some big kauri tree that is supposed to bring good luck if you hug it. well i am not a tree hugger by nature but i did give it a go. apparently the stems in the tree trunk contain pure alcohol, at this point i searched for an axe. next was a stop at whangerei waterfall, we stopped for some lunch and took a little walk round the waterfall, pretty nice place although we have been told we have another 15 or so waterfalls to see that are much nicer. back onto the coach and time for everyone to introduce themselves at the front on the microphone, it was also mandatory to tell one of your most embarrassing stories. these ranged from some ridiculously tame stories to stories of people getting confused and nearly on their mums head when they made a fundamental error on where the bathroom was. i just mentioned an incident in bang bar involving me pe and staggering backwards out of the toilets and finding myself in the corridoor along with bum on glass incident. anyway on to our motel in the bay of island. this country really is beautiful. there are 144 islands in the bay and our motel (waitangi motel) is just over the road from the beach. i am sharing a room with a dutch fella, Jan and a student from london, Steve. everyone seems really cool. i have my own room, we have tv a sofa and a fridge, what more can i ask for. apart from pretty and semi-clad maids. took a walk into town to get some lager and whiskey from the bottle shop, stopped at the beach for a while with quite a few other folk. a few folks went on a traditional maori boat and got scared by the big guys with their spear things and lack of clothing. we had a bbq dinner tonight, cant beat a meat based feast. followed by a number of drinks and midnight 1 legged football, which monika excelled at. this badly progressed to 1 legged volley football with a lisp, while making sound effects upon contact with the ball. strangely this childish behavour kept us amused for hours. not quite left handed fagbutt throwing or best moonwalk competitions sadly. finished up drinking in one of the rooms, there were a couple of french g1rls there so i practiced my perfect french "ou est le bibiloteque", "avec Ouf" and the like, i think they were inpressed, not. anyways all in all a very good first day, tomorrow i go sailing and hopefully get to see some dolphins. i dont have enough pictures to put up yet but i sure will soon. until my next installment, have fun and dont work too hard. Muhahahahahahaha