With the sights of Auckland exhausted (honestly) it was up to Paihia where you can visit the site on which the Treaty of Waitangi was signed and then lost in translation. It's pretty well done, with some good displays and an enormous canoe that was built to mark the centenary of the Treaty.

The big attraction in Paihia is the day trip to Cape Reinga. this included taking in 90-mile beach (which is a lot less than 90 miles long) where we discovered what a 'sweeper' wave is (it's the big one, the one that takes the water from an inch deep to three feet deep and gets your jeans wet when you're paddling in the water and is highly annoying). This was followed by a chance for some sandboarding (a lot of fun, and a longer run than in Fiji) and a trip to the beach.

Next came the point where you can see the Pacific Ocean meeting the Tasman Sea... ish. It's not exactly clear but we managed to agree it was probably on that bit where the waves were like, you know, sort of changing like, a bit, maybe, like, there, right there, yeah? We finished off the day with a visit to a kauri forest - kauri are big, very old trees that make excellent canoes. Or at least they would if you were allowed to cut them down. That night we won the bar trivia night by a landslide, netting a fantastic $50 between nine of us.

For the next day, we did the manly thing and went fishing on the sea. We caught 12 snapper in our three hours, but only one was big enough for us to be allowed to keep it (I say 'we' - only three of us actually caught anything, and seven of them were mine).

Last up it was time to go dolphin spotting, where we saw a huge school of bottlenoses. Unfortunately we couldn't swim with them because they young'uns, but they put on a bit of a circus (see the photos).

Back in Auckland tonight, and heading out tomorrow.