After lunch, a spot of coffee and free internet, we whiled a way a bit of time on our computers before walking up back up to the other end of Queens Street to the cinema, joking with each other that for once we would be early for the
cinema, as the 2 or 3 times we'd been before we'd always managed to be late! We walked through the foyer, heading for the screen when I happened to glance up at the main screen showing the times, only to see that the Inbetweeners
start time for 2.45pm wasn't there, it only had the next showing of 6pm. I glanced at my watched and couldn't believe my eyes......we had totally missed an hour and it was nearly 3.45pm!! We were gobsmacked, and for a couple of minutes were speachless. How could we have missed a whole hour? And we'd only just been so proud that for once we were early for something!
We walked up to the lady behind the counter with our tickets and explained we were there for the 2.45pm showing of the Inbetweeners, she looked at her watch bemused, so we explained that we were idiots, and she saw the funny
side and gave us tickets for when we were next in Auckland, which was the next Wednesday, so at least we didn't lose our money!
So it was back on the bus, and the second leg of the jouney that day, and we ended up in Paihia about 9pm that evening. This time we were staying at a YHA, and when we arrived in Paihia, we walked around the block and found nothing of note, just a load of kids on street corners, and leering lads hanging out of dodgy old bangers. We had a snack and went to our room, which was ok, except for the cockroach that greeted us, and the fact that the walls were paper thin. The rooms were located outside, we were on the top floor, and the front of the rooms were glass from floor to ceiling with sliding doors. We fell asleep, but were soon rudely awoken by our neighbours, a bunch of 20 men staying at our hostel who were there on a fishing trip. They were total rednecks, grunting at each other incoherently, some were fighting, some were threatening to kill each other and this neolithical behaviour continued into the wee small hours. Eventually they went to sleep, but before you could say "Bob's yer uncle", they were up at 6am getting ready for their day at sea. They were so fricking loud, but what was so annoying was they were so chirpy! They had absolutely no consideration for anyone else staying at the hostel, and continued making noise for an hour before they left. And when I say making noise, I mean grunting and talking at the tops of their voices, although I couldn't make out a word they
were saying, except, "Yeah Bro, Yeah Bro.."
Before going out for the day, I spoke to the guy at reception and asked how long the guys were staying as they were so loud, and he replied they were here for a fishing trip and were staying one more night. He said he'd have a word with them, but I knew he wouldn't as he was so timid, he was hardly going to square up to 20 neandathal men.
Aoife and I walked into Paihia, and walked in the opposite direction to the night before, and to our surprise the place turned out to be lovely. A cruise ship was in town and there was a great buzz, so we wandered around and booked our tours for the next two days and went to the Treaty House for a bit of culture.
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| Treaty House |
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| Inside the Treaty House |
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| Irish Rose |
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| Aoife and a Kauri tree trunk |
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| Mauri traditional long boats |
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| Carving inside a meeting house |
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| Meeting house |
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| Pukeko - my favourite bird in NZ |
The evening was spend avoiding our idiot neighbours who had returned with their catch and were proudly having their photos taken with their scaley friends, before cooking the fish, and washing it down with copius amounts of "piss"
and turning their already annoying voices up an octave or two. There was a repeat of the night before, this time without any death threats, and they finally fell asleep in the early hours, so for the rest of the night we heard loud snoring vibrating through our walls. At least they were going home in the morning!
The alarm went off early and we waited outside to be picked up by a 'Dune Rider', our truck/coach for the day. Around the corner it came, all shiny and new, with a truck head connected to a converted truck coach, rather like what we had just come half way around the world in, but shiny new and less appeal.
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| Dune Rider |
We collected the rest of the day trippers and began our journey north, to Cape Reinga and the very tip of New Zealand.
First stop of the day was a giant kauri tree buried forest. These Kauri trees are absolutely massive, the trunks are just monsters. The trees in this forest were all buried thousands of years ago and are being unearthed, still
intact and are being used to build houses and furniture now.
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| Kauri trunk in the buried forest |
Next stop was Cape Reinga, where a lighthouse marks the very North of New Zealand, and where the Tasman sea meets the Pacific.
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| Light house at Cape Reinga |
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| Cape Reinga |
After a lunch stop on a deserted beach, well as deserted as you could get with a coach load of tourists and one lonely seal basking at the waters edge, we drove to to famous sand dunes by Ninety Mile Beach. We all grabbed a body board and made our way up the steep sand dune, huffing and puffing, one step up, two steps down, two steps up, four steps down. Eventually we were all at the top, and one by one we flung ourselves onto the boards and zipped down the dune! Great fun. Although a ski lift would have been handy!
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| Weeeeeeee!!! |
After an adrenaline fix, we drove along Ninety Mile Beach, and the actual beach is part of the highway, so we had great views out to sea. We stopped to dip our toes into the freeing cold Tasman Sea, before heading back to Pahia, stopping
off for fish and chips on the way home.
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| Ninety mile beach |
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| Aoife dipping her toes |
Back at the YHA, the apes had gone home and we had a relaxing evening with no-one waking us in the night, and were once again up early for another trip, this time on the sea.
We boarded the boat, ready for the morning's activity, and it was great to see the captain and the crew were all ladies. We headed from Paihia to Russell to pick up some more passengers, then headed out into open sea, where it became choppy and the boat was rising and falling and crashing back to the ocean with a bang. This is how I like it, a bit of action, but most of the passengers on board went white/green and plenty of shades inbetween, and sick bags were being handed out to everyone. We managed to see a couple of dolphins that were swimming by the bow of our boat, so we stopped and watched them for about thirty seconds before a boat load of people nearby who were there to swim with the dolphins, all jumped in, very ungracefully with snorkells and flippers on, and with all the commotion the dolphins scarpered, never to be seen again.
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| They jumped in and the dolphins legged it |
We sailed to the famous 'hole in the rock', a huge rock out to sea with a hole in the middle, usually the boat would go through it but as the waters were so choppy we couldn't, so it was then time to head back to Russell and Paihia.
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| Hole in the rock |
Aoife and I decided to get off at Russell and have a look around and then get a ferry back to Paihia later.
We went to Russell museum and learnt that back in the old days it was a lawless town, where all the sailors used to stop off after months at sea for supplies, entertainment and women. It was called 'The hellhole of the Pacific', but
now is just a lovely sleepy small town. I wonder where the 'hellhole of the Atlantic was?'
Back at the YHA, we met a lovely guy Scottish called Keith, he had been on a two week recce patrol, driving all over the North Island to see where he and his family back in Scotland should move to next year. He asked us if we would
like to get a lift with him to Auckland, and stop off the night the next day in Whangarei. Aoife and I decided that would be great, so the next day, we ditched the Naked bus for Keith and his little hire car, and drove the hour or so the Whangarei and visited the waterfall there which was beautiful, even in the rain. We headed into town in the afternoon, and as it was the Melbourne cup, we all put a bet on, but shouldn't have bothered. We went into the local Irish pub in town, and behind the bar was one of Aoife's school friends that she hadn't seen since she was twelve!
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| Aoife and Keith |
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| Me at the waterfall |
The next morning, we were Auckland bound, but to make a day of it we drove to some great bays and helped Keith scope out some potential new home towns.
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| Me at the yha in Whangarei |
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| Keith in the cold sea |
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| Our apartment |
Then all too soon we were coming over the Auckland Harbour Bridge, a reminder of what was to come the next day as we were flinging ourselves off that very bridge in the morning. Keith dropped us off at our apartment that we were
staying in for the next two nights, and we got ready to go to the cinema to watch the Inbetweeners which we happily made it in time for. Then it was time to get psyched up for our leap of faith.......................
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