It's been a pretty gloomy start to New Zealand so far. If there's anything I've learned about travelling it's that how much fun you have is mostly chosen by things out of your control: the company and the weather. And both have been pretty crap. Plus I think I'm ill. And so I've spent most of the last three days in bed, wild times.

So since STA messed up my flights I now only have 24 days to do all of New Zealand, which is a lot better than the 16 days it looked like I might have for a while but still meant that I had to cut out a bit of it. I chose to cut out the bottom bit of the south island so I could do the top bit. Big mistake.

We got on the bus which was quite busy with 15 people which was a nice change from how quiet the Oz bus was, but most people were already in their little groups or couples already. The driver didn't stop anywhere on the way which was unfortunate, there's a place called sheepworld where they paint the sheep bright pink but we didn't get to go... I wanted a picture with a pink sheep :( bummer. Got to Paihia where the main activity is to go dolphin watching. Booked onto that afternoon but were told that it was cancelled cos the sea was too rough. Considering this was supposed to be the calm before the storm that was on its way, this was a bit of a worry!

And so we watched some films, napped, watched some more films, and napped some more. We had a few drinks at the bar that night and some people got completely wasted but I just can't be bothered to make the effort to get to know more people that I'll never see again after the next day anymore (they were flying home) so it wasn't great. The next day the gale force winds and non stop pouring rain meant that I didn't even bother leaving the hostel. I just moped around all day and fell asleep at 9pm. I was going to do a jigsaw with a cat eating a pizza but I didn't have the energy. Definitely ill.

We had four days in Paihia cos the buses don't go every day and we needed to do our trip to Cape Reinga, which we finally managed the next day once the rain had calmed down a bit. Or it did in Paihia anyway. We set off with everyone who was left of our group: a couple, two women in their 30s, and a load of other people who joined the tour and didn't talk to us. Fun. I used to think I liked everyone and could enjoy myself with any group, not anymore. I'm a tour group pro now and you can generally tell within two minutes of meeting the group if you're gonna have a barrel of laughs or a load of polite conversation about clouds. This was the latter type of group.

First stop was a bit of tree hugging with the giant Kauri trees that grow there. They were quite big. Then we carried on up to the cape while the really irritating bus driver kept interrupting my naptime by chanting at us in Mauri, apparently in an attempt to ward away the rain. Well it didn't work, and the blue skies we set off with turned into a full on raincloud when we eventually got to the viewpoint. Viewpoints aren't very good when you can't actually view anything. We were supposed to be looking at the point where the Pacific ocean and the Tasman sea join together in a beautiful swirling of colours and waves.... what we were actually looking at was one big cloud. Couldn't even see the ocean that was 10m away. Crawled back to the bus soaking wet only for the clouds to clear as we were driving off. Grr.

The next bit was actually fun though: sandboarding time! The wet sand made it even faster so we zoomed down the hills a couple of times until the rain and the effort involved to climb the hill drove us back to the bus covered in sand. Worth it though. I perked up a bit after that but I'd managed to get sand in my camera (for the billionth time) so spent most of the bus ride along 90 mile beach trying to fix it. This is a really long beach (sixtyish miles... yeah, Kiwi people can't measure) which is also a highway, and is made extra fun by the fact that if you stop you sink and there are lots of waves threatening to sweep you away. I thought the bus driver was overreacting a bit but it turns out these were the worst waves they've seen in a while, exciting. We survived, and went on to look at an ancient kauri tree workshop where we found a nice man to give us a tour and show us his giant saw. Then we ate at the 'best fish and chips shop in the galaxy' which was probably not the best in the galaxy. Quite nice though but they charged $4 for mushy peas and that's just not ok.

Was shattered after that so went straight to bed at 6pm and stayed there until the morning. This was when we finally got to go on our dolphin cruise, and the weatherman promised nicer weather and periods of sunshine, wooohoo. Well, the weatherman lied. We did see dolphins though which was pretty cool until the woman said that yesterday they'd been dancing around and people had swam with them and everything, they weren't in the mood today apparently. Then we went to see a bit hole in the rock which was also quite cool except that yesterday they got to take the boat through the tiny hole. Should have gone yesterday clearly. The weather was still s*** and the 400 islands all looked pretty much the same shade of grey, up until the point we were getting off the boat of course, where the weather became amazing. Naturally. Spent some time in Russel, known as the hellhole of the Pacific back in the day cos of all the w****houses and grog bars. We struggled enough to find a pub. It was the least hellhole-ish place I've seen so far here seeing as the sun was shining and it was full of quaint little houses, ironic. Then we hopped back ashore and got on the bus back to Auckland, thus ending our pretty lacklustre trip to the far North.

It wasn't even that bad in hindsight but I'm just not feeling it so far. My head hurts and everything aches and I'm so so tired. Also the fact that home is so close now (three weeks aaaaahhh!) means that I just want to go back and be with people I know. I'm tired of trying to make friends with people I have nothing in common with, it's depressing. I actually really like New Zealand as a country though, just the bright green rolling hills are pretty enough without me even seeing the mountains yet! Probably just a bit of pathetic fallacy going on (oof get me and my english lit A level), I'm sure I'll be back to my chipper old self once the sun comes out. Yeah whine whine whine, travelling the world and having fun is so hard etc. Sleeeepy time.