K, so its finally here! Ive promised a b****in travel blog so brace yourselves, theres lots to take in. It all started when my bro met me in Vancouver and we jumped on a plane to LAX-Fiji-Auckland. Spent the first week in Auckland just taking it all in. The City of Sails. Beautiful city it is. We got to the top of the Skytower (tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere) to catch a look at how massive a place it is. Lucky the lounge was closed so we got to go up again the next day for free. Decided to go at night to see the brilliance. Good call. A few hangovers(they serve till dawn!) and couple hundred $ later we rented a car and headed to the sub-tropical Northland in search of some prime beach. A little local knowledge guided us to a place called Matauri Bay on the pacific ocean. Incredible, and a little history there as well. Its the final resting place of the Rainbow Warrior; a flagship of the Greenpeace fleet that was sunk by French spies to prevent it from interfering with nuclear testing. Its a cool story, check it out if u have the time.

During a sick game of hack, i managed to twist up my knee real proper. So, fast-forward a week of crutch hobbling, beach loungin, car campin, and our first NZ possum sighting (awesome!), we left the Northland for the Coromandel Peninsula. More on that later. Thnx for reading!