Today we were leaving the Bay of Islands so we got checked out, had brekkie, then we went across to Russell - the spiritual base of the Maori people. Well! Russell was crazy manic...not! We got the boat over, stepped off the boat, and realised pretty much immediately that it was going to be impossible to kill 4 hours at this tiny place! It was just going to have to be brunch, lunch, snack, afternoon tea...etc! We walked the main street and the rest of the town in about 10 minutes flat, impressive!

We stopped for a latte and a hot chocolate (a bonus for me as Amber always gets marshmallows with her hot chocolate and she doesn't like them so guess who gets them?!) Then we went shopping and bought a 'travelling ring' each, nice and extremely cheap! After exhausting the delights of Russell (seriously...there was NOTHING there!) we got the boat back with a bit of a Michael Jackson soundtrack on Amber's Ipod...with dancing from Miss K Poole!

We got back to the hostel, chilled for a bit then got picked up by the bus where we went straight through back to Auckland - very strange to go back to somewhere we have already been - that is a first on our trip! We got another amazing salad and had dinner in the hostel then got to bed. Unfortunately, there was a Canadian guy in our room who decided just to keep talking constantly, whilst we were trying to read. He was so annoying, but funny at the same time, and he LOVES Canada! That was all he spoke about. He declared himself to be a 'social butterfly' and demanded that we stop reading so we could chat with him. Annoying guy, but funny!