Magic Bus oh Magic Bus! We booked our trip to the bay of islands with a company called Magic and jesus does it take an age to get anywhere with them!! They are a touristy bus so take you to every little stop possible no matter how unexciting it is! Anyway we eventually got to our destination in the late afternoon and Paihia the main town up on the Bay of Islands was a pleasant surprise. Its a little beach town thats really pretty. The main reason we went up there was to do the Cape Reinga trip which takes you to the most northern point of New Zealand.

The first part of the trip took us to a Kauri tree forest which are some of the oldest trees in the world. The trees we saw were around at the same time Jesus was born! 2000 years old! They are pretty amazing. Next was the Cape reinga stop where you could see the Pacific and the Tasman sea meeting. The weather wasn't that great so the views were a bit restrictive but it was still a really pretty part of the world. On the way up our driver talked to us a bit about Maori traditions and their beliefs which is really interesting. For example they beleive that when they die their spirit goes back to their homeland (Hawaike - mythical land) via a tree on the very tip of Cape Reinga- which has been there since they arrived 800 years ago.

Our next stop was lunch on a beach but it rained...booo! Then we went sand boarding YAY! It was so much fun. you get handed a board tahts the size of a body board and then you have to walk up a really tall sand dune which is killer. Then you basically jump off and slide down at high speed! So funny! There were quite a few people there when we went and so we had quite an audience. Tom got a round of applause when he did his as he managed to get all the way to the bottom without falling off and even ended up in the stream at the bottom! I was like "Well done babe how did you manage that?" "I didn't know how to stop!" was his reply! All you have to do is drag your feet in the sand Tom! We did it twice thats about all i could manage...too much fun for one day!

On the way home we drove along the 90 mile beach which reminded us both of Fraser Island in Australia where we drove 4X4s except we were on a bus! We stopped off along the way for the driver to pick some shellfish and eat it! Raw! MMMM! There was aVietnamese guy on our bus who took away a bag full...nutter!

Luckily on the way home we stopped for real fish and chips! Not bad but not as good as mamma makes!!