Jan 2007

Up in Paihia hasn't been so bad. I managed to find something to do yesterday while Necha went on her dolphin cruise. I took a ferry across the bay to a little town called Russell. I hiked up to a monument called the Flagstaff. There was some really nice views up there too. I hiked down a little further and managed to find a secluded beach all to myself. It was very peaceful.

Today we went on a Cream Trip Cruise. This ship delivers cream (milk) and other things to the different islands in the Bay of Islands. We cruised along a whole lot of little islands. We stopped over at one island and got to go on a glass bottom submarine that was included in our trip. We got to see an eagle ray, some snapper and some other fish whose names I can't remember.

But the best of all was when we arrived at the Hole in the Rock. It was so cool! This giant rock in the middle of the Pacific that has a giant hole through it. I took lots of pictures. But then we started heading straight for it. Uh oh! Yah, we went through the hole. It was so awesome. The water out there was so blue. Almost a navy blue. It was really neat. I noticed as you got farther away from Paihia the waters were less murky and more clear and bright.

Well we finally made it out of the city and took a bus up to Paihia. It was raining off and on all day which was good cause we really didn't do a whole lot. We wandered around and got lots of pamphlets at the travel place to see what we are going to do out here. Necha is going on a dolphin cruise tomorrow and I'm headed out to a little town called Russell that has lots of hiking trails. Not sure what to do here...we're here until Jan 30 but I don't know what is going to happen.

Yesterday and today were more exciting days, and better weather. Yesterday, a girl that Necha met on the plane picked us up and took us out to a couple of black sand beaches on the West side of Auckland. It was a pretty sweet treat considering buses don't run out there. So, not many tourists get to go out there. First we stopped at Piha Beach. It was so beautiful. The surf was really rough and there weren't many swimmers, but lots of experienced surfers. There were also people training to be lifeguards. It was so windy though. They were going out into the ocean with just little rubber motorized boats and flying over every wave!

Next we headed out to Karekare Beach. It was basically the same except it seemed to go on forever. There was also a huge mountain of trees on the left hand side.

We walked all day long and then Anna brought us out to Piha Waterfall. It was a fair climb of only 1/2 an hour but the top was beautiful. There were lots of people swimming at the bottom of it too. It was kinda cold though. I would compare it to our mountain waters back home.

We were pretty pooped that day and Anna told us that her mom wanted us to go over for supper. She had Canadian Pacific Salmon dip for us, since she just came back from visiting Canada, and then steak, corn on the cob and salad. We had some really good wine too! I'm not too keen on the wine but it was very tasty. I think it was Matau and it was from Hawke's Bay which is in the south of the North Island of NZ. Apparently, Kerry was telling us that is where she grew up so that was really cool.

Today we used one of our superpass tickets to take a boat out to Ringototo Island. It is an active volcanic island about a 1/2 from Auckland. We got to walk up to the summit and see an awesome panaramic view of the city. We met some really cool people on the way up there too. They took lots of pictures of us for us. We also trekked over to some volcanic lava caves. They were really spooky and no one was out there. I guess no one was very interested. But they were awesome.

I will post pictures when I find a computer with better rates. Our hostel right now doesn't have the best of computers and it takes forever for me to download pictures. Then when I'm not paying attention my computer will shut down and I'll loose everything. Irritating.

Ta ta for now,

PS Dave: the toilets really do flush the other direction

Yesterday was a rainy day. But it was still warm. Only had to put my sweater on a couple of times. We took a bus down to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater Park in the morning. It was really cool. It is an aquarium that was made in the old sewage system. Sounds gross but apparently they cleaned it out really good and made giant aquariums out of them.

When you first walk in you can look through a couple of port holes into the penguin exhibit. They have a simulated environment that they keep the penguins in. They were molting so some of them were kind of ugly. Ha ha!

Further down is the Stingray tank. These animals were huge! We got to see feeding time and they were hungry. They would rub up against the person with the food and almost knock them over. The feeders had to stuff the food into their mouths. They would also come up near the edge of the tank and stick themselves out of the water a little bit. I got to touch one. It was really slimy.

The next exhibit was a couple of tunnels in which the aquarium ran up and around you. In these aquariums were sharks and some more stingrays.

Ahead was more tanks and aquariums full of different fish, eels, and sea horses! We saw nemo's and dori's of course. I liked the sea horses the best.

They also had on display the largest squid ever caught in New Zealand. He was kinda ugly though.

After we had our fun there we walked down to Mission Bay again since it was so close. Just a 10 minute walk. They had a beach rave going on there so we went to check it out. Lots of drunk people though. They had beer and wine on the beach! Imagine trying that at Jarvis! I don't think it would fly.

It was kind of rainy and not very warm so we wandered around and took some pictures. Then we headed to Movenport to get some icecream. Apparently Hokey Pokey icecream is pretty famous here. Necha got that icecream but I got caramelita. All around it was pretty good.

I finally made it to Auckland, with only minor difficulties. I made it great from Edmonton to Denver and then from Denver to Los Angeles. But then my gut feeling came true when the dude at the Qantas wicket asked if I would like a direct flight instead. So why not. Shorter flight time and then I wouldn't have to lay over in Sydney for 11 hours by myself.

Instead, I got into Auckland at 6:00 am and had to phone the hostel to leave Necha a message to pick me up. Well the lady here did not give her the message right away so I didn't get picked up until close to 11:00 am.

Necha didn't let me sleep either. She let me have a shower and then took me up to the Harbour where we walked around and bought our Auckland Pass where we buy tickets for attractions for a low price. So we went up to the Sky Tower and took a bunch of cool pictures. It's basically the same as the Calgary Tower but the elevator up has glass doors and a glass floor. And people can jump off of it.

After that we got some Subway (yah there is KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Subway here!) and then we headed out to the Harbour to watch the sailboats.

Then we were a little bored so we took a bus out to Mission Bay where we just walked along the beach and searched for good shells. It wasn't that hot out when I got here and I wasn't smart enough to put on suntan lotion so you can guess what happened. I burnt.

Anyhoo I gotta go help Necha make supper.