After literally a whole day stuck on the bus travelling up from Wellington to Auckland, even after all we'd said the night before none of us were really
in the mood for doing much that night. I ended up walking around the city with Anna and scouting out places to go the next day/night. I was up pretty early in the morning as I'd been dying to go for a swim for about a week now and it had been near impossible to find a pool. I sat in McDonalds across the road with a coffee as they have free Internet and searched online for a pool. Seems that even in a big city not many people like to swim... I called a few gyms to see if I could use their facilities but the cheapest one wanted $20!! Fair enough if I was going all out and doing classes etc but I only wanted to do lengths. Eventually I found out that I could use the Olympic Pool for muuuuch cheaper so I wandered off in search for a bus to take me there.

I should have predicted what was about to happen really... it never goes any other way... I pretty much stumbled across the correct bus purely by chance, but of course I forgot to ask the driver to remind me when I should get off seeing as I have NO idea where I am. Long story short - I did a varied reenactment of Busan and ended up having to do the bus loop twice, the second time around sitting RIGHT behind the driver. He joked that at least I got a free sightseeing tour...

That afternoon we headed to the Stray office to sort out the rest of our itineraries as they'd all changed around after spending longer than planned in the south island. After jiggling around with dates it turns out that we could catch the bus the next day up to Paihia and the girls could go even further north up to Cape Rainga in the Bay Of Islands which unfortunately my pass didn't cover (although even if it did I wouldn't have enough time). So it pretty much meant that tonight would be our last main night together as we'd go our separate ways after Monday and so decided to have one last night out in Auckland together.

The remainder of that afternoon we just shopped for a while and the girls bought some bits and pieces and I got a dress in the sale for £5. We had an early dinner at a Turkish restaurant and then bought a couple bottles of wine to sneak into the hostel to drink while getting ready. Can't believe this was our last night together cos although we'd only travelled together 3 weeks it felt like we'd known each other a LOT longer. From what I remember we went to 3 or 4 bars and the next thing I know I woke up in the morning with a Sombrero in my bed aha. Maybe a night out before a 7am start wasn't the best of ideas but at least we got to spread and crash out on the empty bus up to Bay Of Islands.