We took the flight from Fiji with Air Pacific........a big plane with friendly staff but unreassuringly dated. They still have the ash trays from on the seats and in the toilets very retro!! watched blind side awesome film.
We arrived in Aukland the city of sails very excited indeed. We booked up a trip north to Bay of islands, Paihia pretty much straight away keen to get out of the city which was a bit of a culture shock after the peaceful slow pace in Fiji.
We were picked up by Daisy (male) the stray bus driver early the next day. We had a few stops enroute hugging 800 year old kauri trees which were massive, and a ride on a glass bottomed boat in goat island marine park seeing some pretty big fish!! Daisy was a good guy and kept us all entertained with games while the kilometres passed by.
We stopped overnight in Paihia, the location where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, which is basically a legal document from way back that set the rules of how land would be governed between the indiginous Maori and us invaders. In true form we stitched 'em up good and proper and this has left NZ with ongoing disputes to this day!! We had a few pics taken at the site and felt ourselves to be satisfactorily culturalised!!
The next day was an early rise to have a day that provided the absolute highlight of the trip (and as you maybe aware we're a month late writing this and that fact remains!! We spent the morning aboard the dolphin explorer. After an hour aboard our optimism was dwindling especially given that they informed us only 20 percent of the rides end with actually swimming with dolphins but then........we found a pod of bottlenose dolphins. They were swimming along side the boat as we hurridly put our snorkels and masks on but no wetsuits. Luckily the adrenaline from the sight of the 3m long dolphins kept us warm (kind of) as we waited for 15 minutes for the ok to jump in. Once in it was amazing, we had two sets of 20 minutes swimming with the pod feeling very slow and overwelhmed by their size and speed in the water.
After the swim we were dropped in a small town called Russel where we had some hot chocolate and lunch sitting by the beach revelling in our experience.
The buzz didnt wear off all afternoon and we bored everyone to tears on the bus ride south to Auckland that afternoon!! We stopped at Haruru falls, which translated into english means'big nose' as you can imagine mike was in his element, finally seeing one much bigger than his own. The ride added to our day though, stopping in a small wild bird sanctuary. We got to see and pet the Kiwi bird which is apparently quite rare, and a first for our driver Daisy.
We were keen to get back to Auckland that night as we had planned to meet up with Nicole, a friend from Fiji for a night out before we board the bus again in the morning to head south.
As excited as we were to be meeting up with Nicole we were a little concerned with her choice of destination when we were informed it was one of the more expensive restaurants in Auckland and we were on our travelling budget. Mike managed to crack out his shirt for the first time since leaving the UK for the occassion and even managed to remember what the iron was invented to do. Our journey there on the bus was spent planning how we were going to be frugil travellers and keep the costs down.
When we arrived Nicole was with a few friends and we all got on well had a few glasses of wine and some very tasty pizza. At the end of the meal we were waiting to pay to find Nicoles friend had settled the bill and treated us to a great meal to round off a great day. We went back to his house (mansion) to find ourselves in something from MTV cribs. This obviously seemed a little out of the ordinary and it was then revealed why the boys had been talking so much about cricket.......we had been treated to diner by an ex Kiwi international cricket player!! We enjoyed a few more drinks with our new friends and the night ended very late. When our heads hit the pillows we only had three hours until we were due on the Stray bus for the next leg of our journey. What a surreal day, one that goes down as one of the best days since leaving the UK!!
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