Auckland to Bay of Islands

Monday 26th -Thursday 29th

We got picked up by the big green bus outside our hostel at 7.30am. On the way to bay of islands we stopped at a bakery for some breakfast ...

Our hostel, the pipi patch, was just a minutes walk to the beach. There was already a girl in our dorm, Uki from Hong Kong. She seemed to have run out of money but was waiting 2weeks here before going to South Island to work. not sure why though! she pretty much just sat in the room all day doing nothing except going to the kitchen to make lunch! Don't know why she bothered getting up at 7am everyday to do b***** all!!She did have a friend to keep her company in the evenings. Karen, also from Hong Kong, was drawn to bay of islands...to work in a fish and chip shop. speechless.
We were later joined by Rob, a Liverpudlian that lived in Newquay. it's fair to say he was pretty dim! 2 German guys joined our dorm too. we absolutely love Germans. their humour is just so different (no existent!?) to ours. those of you that know us well we be aware of how humorous we are...
Basty and Alex couldn't get over the concept of having savoury or meat pies. I wish I'd captured the utter disgust and horror on their faces when we were talking about how amazing pies are!!

We spent our first day here on the beautiful beach soaking up the scorching sun. trying to relax in the afternoons rays we were disturbed by a load of commotion by the rest of the beaches visitors. there was a SHARK about 10m off the shore! the swimmers got out, the kayakers got in! there were some locals sat by us saying they'd never seen a shark at the beach before. we can only imagine there was something wrong with it to be that close to the shore. it was there for the duration of the day swimming up and down, there goes my refreshing swim out the window! The shark activity was the talk of the hostel; Dom, another of our hilarious German friends informed us that he thought it was a baby great white. now we're no shark experts, but that was not a great white!!
That evening we had tea at the hostel, they put on a BBQ for just $12 (£6. it's exactly half out here) including a pint it a glass of wine, steak, sausage, jacket potato, salad, coleslaw and bread. baaaaaargain!

On Tuesday we took a day trip to Cape Reinga, the most northern point of New Zealand. This day was AWESOME! our driver Spike was late 40s, a big kid and had so much knowledge. really fun and interesting. en route we stopped at a kauri forest. kauri trees are native to New Zealand and are enormous.
We then headed to the beach to go sandboarding on the dunes. no-one told us that we were going to need a ridiculous level of fitness to get up the dunes but it was worth the hugging and puffing; the view was awesome and the boarding really good fun. Dom says he got a video of me coming down which I'm yet to see, I doubt it's my best angle!
next we went to the tip of New Zealand where there is a light house, beautiful views and you can also see where the North Pacific meets the Tazmin sea!
We went back to the beach where the sand dunes were, it's called 90mile beach. the beach isn't actually 90miles long though. the name comes from way back when farmers used the beach to transport cattle. they estimated that the cows could walk 30miles a day and it would take 3days to get to the other end, hence 90miles. however, when someone measured it they found out it was actually 90km, but it didn't sound as good so they kept the name, plus there's a beach in Australia that's even longer but they didn't want to be beaten! We bombed down the beach at 90kmh chasing birds. hours of fun! it was really cool driving alongside the SHAG birds, amazing how fast they fly with such little movement, quite mesmerising.
Our penultimate stop was to a factory that carves the kauri trees. there was a tree trunk that had a staircase carved inside it, that was pretty impressive, everything else in the shop looked pretty naff and bought in!
On the way home we stopped at the fish and chip shop, fish of the day was blue nose. it was really meaty (chickeny fish) and tasty. We got home at 7ish and were absolutely pooped, sat down and didn't leave the room til morning! If you're ever in Bay of Islands this is a definite must do trip.

The next day we had a nice lie in before going on an Eco dolphin experience in the afternoon, we were told that the dolphins were as long as cars and as round as horses! This was a fab opportunity to see all the little islands in the area aswell as see the dolphins. at our first stop we travelled along side a pod of about 12 dolphins. the tour operators are restricted to how long they can stay with each pod so we moved on to a new locations. here we got into wet wetsuits, snorkels and flippers and got in with them! as cold as it was we soon warmed up swimming with them, another stint of being an athlete! They were huge, but not as big as we'd been told! it was quite surreal watching them swim underneath us then seeing them jump out of the water.
We built up an appetite and thought we ought to have some fresh fish as we were right on the coast, not dolphin of course though! We went to the Swiss cafe (not sure where the influence was though!) I had grilled salmon with an Asian salad which was deeeelicious and grace had a chicken salad; a much needed change from fish and batter! however, despite trying to be good, we moved on to another bar and had 2 more glasses of wine each and shared an ice cream sundae!

Thursday we were due to leave which was lucky as it was pissing it down! we dug out our rain coats and headed off to the supermarket to get organised and start cooking for ourselves. sadly it could be abit of a pasta diet for the next couple of weeks-don't much fancy lugging around a store cupboard of ingredients!
After a zillion episodes of 'how I met your mother' back at the hostel whilst waiting for the big green bus we headed back to Auckland for one night.