The north face - Blogabond

It was like our first day of school as we anxiously stepped on to the big, orange bus waiting for us outside our hostel. With names ticked off and bags loaded underneath we set off on what felt even more like a school trip than we had imagined, when we had scheduled toilet and lunch breaks and plenty of 'photo opportunities!!' This took a little bit of getting used to as we are such seasoned travellers (even if we do say so ourselves!) especially when half an hour in, the driver forced us to do speed dating so everyone could get to know each other....CRINGE! We did forgive the driver, hilariously named Hoff, though as he turned out to be our favourite! The whole idea of stray was a whistle stop tour of the best spots in New Zealand and depending on your itinerary you can choose to stay longer in certain places, which we were luckily able to do a couple of times. So here is a quick run down.....

Hahei

Cathedral Cove

Pretty, coastal town from where we walked to Cathedral cove (with a slightly Laura infatuated Austrian named Michael in tow) and despite paying $10 for the pleasure, ended up cooking a BBQ for 25 people, whilst ordering the muppet foreigners around the kitchen!!! We also got involved in an All Blacks v Wallabies rugby match, where we did end up siding with our future homeland and contemplated who had the better looking players.

Raglan
Cool, surfer town where we wished we could of stayed longer. (Luckily we aren't surfers as the sea was apparently the flatest it has been in ages!) Instead we topped up some sexy knee tannage (good old leggings!) and checked out some of the surfers. Then (close your ears Mum) we hitchhiked back to the hostel with a man and his HUGE, over-friendly dog, when Coops was asked 'do you mind?' as he took a swig from his bottle of white wine - turns out he wasn't referring to the drink driving, but just wanted her to move out of the way of the brown paper bag! Good times!

Says it all....

Waitomo

Before the lights went out....

We visited the infamous Waitomo glow worm caves and definitely opted for the easy option of the 'Spellbound' tour (Who wants to wade around in pitch black caves in murky, eel-infested waters?!? Yes we saw an actual eel - gross!) The glow worms were amazing and it was like looking up into space. They only decided to tell us that the photos never come out after we had spent a good 10 minutes snapping away! At one point, we were told to turn off our head torches so that we could acclimatise our night vision, turns out this didn't work so well as Coops was supposed to be leading the group out of the caves and just kept squealing! Bets was also hit in the face by an old man who thought he was grabbing her shoulder (well thats what he said!) and more giggles ensued when Coops grabbed for the guide in the darkness and was told "thats not my shoulder" ahahaha -maybe you had to be there....

Maori cultural evening
Luckily we had been warned that despite this being worthwhile, it can be embarrassing unless intoxicated. Sadly we were not intoxicated. And yes it was embarrassing. We were greeted by our Maori chief in Adidas tracky b's and were hoarded into a canteen style room. He did tell us about the Maori culture and we had some yummy dinner. We then had to partake in the traditional Maori greeting, where us girls had to try our hardest not to laugh as we shook hands and touched faces/noses with 16 year old boys who had clearly been roped in for a bit of extra pocket money. Awkward!!! The aim of the evening was for the guys to learn the haka and the girls to learn how to dance with a poi (no, we didn't know what this was either!!!)

The scary haka

Sleepover for all!!

The night was topped off by the fact that we had to then all bed down in one massive room, including a fat American who snored like a freight train! Also please note at this point we were sharing our crazy fun travel activities with 2 old biddies from South Africa who were also on our bus! Random, but we did love them and wanted to put them in our pockets!

Rotorua

Looking sexy, waiting for death!!!

White water rafting baby!! We will let the pictures speak for themselves when we get them up here. We had a great time with our super fun guide Drax and luckily we didn't fall in and the boat didn't flip either. (We have since heard some traumatising stories an have realised that we got off quite lightly and won't be doing rafting again!)

Taupo
Fun town with lots of backpackers on the banks of beautiful lake Taupo with views of snow capped mountains (one of which is Mount doom, lord of the rings stylee!)
This was the place that Bets decided to throw herself out of a plane! After handing over half of her life savings she thought that the 7 WHOLE minutes were definitely worth it. Quote: it was fricking awesome! We shall bypass the fact that Coops was too scared and opted for a shopping spree instead and returned with some fun new leggings from a childrens shop...do we have pumpkin patch in england???
SKY DIVE - DONE. (You will have to wait until we get home to see the video!)

Napier
We decided to go crazy and venture off the stray route to the cool art deco town of Napier, where we enjoyed wandering around town with the striking buildings. From here, we embarked on our wine tour, as Coops insisted this was a must. Turns out after handing over your dollar you are pretty much in for a heavy afternoons drinking sesh, whilst occasionally saying words such as 'oaky' and 'strawberries' whilst looking off into the distance! We did find some fun new wines that we both liked but have since completely forgotten them due to memory loss. Totally worth the money don't you think?! ;-)

Don't mind if i do!

Enjoying wine time!

We think that this is enough to read for now - we know that you have been waiting a long time for this one, so we wouldn't want to spoil you now would we!? We best get back to our white wine in the early evening sunshine and our steak for dinner.

We won't mention that we just deleted this entire thing and have had to re-write it and Letty's fingers are about to drop off. So much internet rage right now!!!!!!!!! (Don't worry the wine is easing the pain!!)

Lots of love from the impending heat wave that is Australia. Enjoy the snow everyone.
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written by

coopsandbets on December 9, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia

from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!

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Woop woop, Amazing!! The hitching dude with the white wine sounds like you totally 'lucked out' on that excursion!!
Luff luff
xxx

written by

Lejjy on December 5, 2010

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