A lot of our time in Auckland was spent deliberating over the best way to spend our 6 weeks here. After getting about a million different opinions, we opted for the STRAY bus (for those not in-the-know, it's a hop-on hop-off tour bus that covers both islands). Our first excursion was up to the Northland, to visit the picturesque Bay of Islands. We stayed in a cute beach town called Paihia, which was nice to wonder round and we ventured to Haruru waterfall (you will get used to the c-razy Maoiri names for everything...we have had to!!!) Paihia is also the place where the famous 'Treaty of Waitangi' was signed between Maori chiefs and European settlers in 1840. We managed to sneak into the treaty house and meeting house to read up on it and we very much enjoyed this culture lesson as it is something that has since cropped up in lots of other places we've been to.

Our highlight here was a boat trip around the Bay, where we saw a 'school' (not too sure if this is the correct terminology) of Dolphins. There was about 15 of them (including babies) and we got right up close so we could take looooads of photos. Bets luckily got to see them jumping out of the water and rolling around. We were told that amazingly some of them were sleeping even as they moved (who knew dolphins slept!?!) It actually made us both feel a bit emotional as it was such a rare and amazing sight (cue the kleenex...) We also visited 'the whole in the rock', one of the Islands that has been eroded to have a tunnel going through it, which the boat could go all the way through. We also saw 3 seals lazing about chillaxing in the sun. The scenery was lush with bright turquoise water, really rugged coastline, but this was really weird when contrasted with farmland covered with sheep also on the islands. It was like some weird welsh parallel universe.

We also went to the Northern most point of NZ - Cape Reinga where we were seriously underwhelmed by the meeting of the 2 seas: Tasman and Pacific. Apparently it's normally very dramatic, but we had such nice weather, you could barely tell. From here we drove down 90-mile beach (does what it says on the tin) and went crazy by throwing ourselves off a sand dune on a boogie board type thing on our tummies...this ridiculous activity is known as Dune Boarding! It was very fun, but bloody hard work trying to climb it and resulted in sand everywhere!

This was our first taste of New Zealand's amazing hilly scenery, and we are loving it very much. But FYI there are definitely more cows than sheep, as dairy farming is now more prominent here....and did you know that NZ supplies a third of the worlds dairy produce?! "Amazing eh bru"!

We have also discovered some new NZ lingo:
Jandals = flip flops
Trundel = supermarket trolley
"growen" and "knowen" = grown and known
"sweet as" = that's cool
"bro" (said "bru") = mate

We have been overjoyed with the supermarkets here. Mostly because of:
- the huge supplies of Cadburys and Whittakers chocolate
- peanut butter (which appears to be a staple in every travellers
coldbag)
- normal cheese, that doesn't cost the earth
- actually having a choice of what we can make for dinner...pasta
sauce has never tasted so good.

So that's NZ so far...lots more fun to come....

Sweet as bro xxxx

written by  coopsandbets on December 8, 2010 from Wellington, New Zealand
from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!
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PD you little bronzed Goddess you!! I definately didnt appreciate how amazing it is being away when I was in South America- now I'm stuck in pooey Basingstoke...waaaaahhhhhh :( you're both looking super hot! Enjoy NZ! If you don't do a skydive I'll come and get you xxxx

written by  Hezzleyyyy on November 16, 2010

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