The Tamaki Tour was excellent - we had to paddle our Waka (canoe) Which was in fact a bus to go to the village. We appointed a chief from our bus, John, and arrived at the outskirts. At that point the warriors would come and try and frighten us away by pulling silly faces and sticking thir tongues out. We were not allowed to laugh as they tried to intimidate us. This finished with us being accepted and having to touch noses twice (Three times means you will get m...

So we left in the pouring rain. Supposedly they have had the months rainfall in 2 days here - atleast it gets it out of the way! We drove to hot water beach and looked at it from the bus - it did not look nearly hot enough! We had a nice night in 'the cats pyjamas' which reminded me of nana's house and had an eccentric lady running it. The next morning we drove to a town which has now renamed itself as hobbiton as the Lord of the Rings hobbiton wa...

Our hostel in Auckland was very much like a university halls and came with "lav-ends" which were just as cold and un welcoming as at CH. We left early to get to the Bay of Islands. This area is beautiful. The bay is home to several pods of wild bottlenosed dolphins so we took advantage and went on a tour to see them. They were very exciting, would jump around, would ride the bow wave and would come up to the front of the boat so they are only 30cm away. Later we ...

So we left Fiji in a glittery seated Taxi and spent 2 hours trying to spend our saved departure tax (which we in the end did not need to pay!) in duty free. Arrived at Auckland where immigration laughed and wished us luck on finding somewhere to stay at midnight. The first place we phoned had a twin room so we headed there. On our first morning in Auckland we walked arou8nd the whole CBD and posh Parnell. The weather is glorious but much colder than Fiji so we ha...