Just had a great 3 days travelling around the Northland of New Zealand. Travelled on the Stray bus network and immediately met up with a really great group of travellers. A couple from the UK, a Swiss, a couple of Canadians, a German and two New Zealanders. We all hit it off immediately and that carried on for the next 3 days.

We headed up to the Bay of Islands which is a beautiful bay with about 140 islands which we had a boat trip around. The idea was to go swimming with dolphins, but as there were baby dolphins in the group this had to be abandoned. There are some beautiful beaches and houses on the Islands and if one of my friends wins the lottery in the next 30 years I would quite like my pick of these as a gift!!

Next day we headed through the Northland forest park where we saw the largest trees in the world...the Kauri tree. These are the ones which grow to 15m diameter and live for over 2,000 years. We then headed up to the most Northerly point in New Zealand, Cape Reinga. This is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. One is calm as a lake and one is really rough. The way the Kiwi's explain the difference is that the Tasman Sea also borders on Australia, and they are always stirring up trouble...so that is the rough side. After this we did some Sand surfing which was great fun. There are huge sand dunes which we surfed down...apparently you can get to about 45km/Hr...Had a great laugh!! Finally we headed down the 90 mile beach on the bus. As we were driving down we saw a beached whale. Unfortunately it had died a while ago and had started to decompose. It was huge and stunk to high heaven.

On the last day we went for a Kayak around the Bay of Islands. Was lovely to have the freedom of the bay. I need to do this more often!!

Got a lift back to Auckland from Becca from London...Was a great few days that I will remember for a long time. Cant wait for the rest of my NZ experience.