I started my tour on the stray bus very early on Sunday morning. I was quite glad to be leaving the city and straight away not disappointed by the simply stunning scenery of the North Island of New Zealand. This definitely made up for the cold weather. I instantly made friends, quickly with the only other english girl on the tour (Kate from Devon), 2 girls from Austria, a guy from Canada and 2 guys from Germany. In total in the group there was about 20 of us. Our tour host is hilarious and makes you get involved, as most people are on their own. I feel like I've known the two austrian girls for weeks now, they're lovely. The bus is a hop on / hop off so if you stayed on the bus you could do the North Island in 8 days, however that's quite intense as there are activities and travel every day so I decided to stay with the Austrian girls and we hopped off for 2 nights in raglan, the small surf town. So on the first day we decided to go for a surf lesson... It was fantastic! I'd never surfed before and was very nervous as the waves were massive! So much for a beginner lesson. We started very shallow and the 2 instructors pushed the board into the waves and told us when to stand up for the first few times. I suddenly thought, yes I can do this! Until he then said right now do it on your own... It's so hard to get the timing of the wave and knowing which wave to get on, it was suddenly much harder! I managed to stand up by myself which I was very proud of. Once stood it felt very similar to snowboarding. The lesson was 3 hours long, we were exhausted and as the tide got higher and the waves got higher it became much harder. We finished the lesson starving and aching already. If you don't have your board straight into the wave it will hit you as well so I also have a few war wounds, but I've learnt to keep my board straight now! It hurts when you get hit lol. So after that we joined the rest of the group that were too chicken to surf when it was cold (it was not like australian water that's for sure, my wetsuit was needed). We then all had a bbq together which was lovely. The next day I woke up so stiff, we decided a nice chill out day would be good. It was pouring down with rain all morning so we went to the library and made use of the free wifi. Then in the afternoon the sun came out so we had a nice walk and then coffee in the local shop. Raglan is such a cute little village surrounded by water on one side and mountains on the other. Everyone is so relaxed and I see what people mean when they say New Zealand is a little behind with the times. Nobody is stressed here, it seems like such a nice place to live, everyone is so friendly. There are no locks on any of the houses because there is no crime here. I'm not sure I could live in this little village though as I'd feel a little isolated but it's been lovely to stay here 2 nights. Today is a much better day in terms of weather so we are taking the hostels free kayaks out onto the lake which will be nice. Then later we are cooking a pizza together as they have a pizza oven. Then after that we will hop in the free jacuzzi and sauna! We have been so spoilt in this place, it's so lovely. I have also booked the same hop on / offs as the two Austrian girls so that'll be nice to stay with them rather than constantly making new friends :-) so tomorrow we will hop back on the bus, I won't spoil what we are doing tomorrow as I'll save that for the next blog, it'll be fun though!!