That night we were left by half of the tour group; the tour sort of resembles a jump-on jump-off deal. We were joined that morning by 17 new comers and off we went, bound for Rotarua.
On board was a nice mix of new chicks and a couple cool new blokes too. As we headed towards Waitomo (lit: big hole [cave] of water) I sat next to Ryan, Charlotte and Susanne (whom I hung with most), all great folk.
Anyway, at Waitomo the caving and quad bike options seemed to expensive to me so I spent a few hours taking a nature walk through a lovely forest, followed by a viewing of shaving Angora rabbits, followed by a tour through a glow worm cave, topped off with a snooze in the park. The glow worm cave was really cool because its cathedral is regarded to have wonderfully extraordinary acoustics and has been used as a concert hall for opera singers, Rod Stewart, The Vienna Boys Choir, and others.
(The thing about caves though is that photos tend to turn out black.)

Back to Auckland, and Base backpackers, but this time we had motel-like rooms, and I was endowed with a whole room to myself which was tops. As a group we went down to a nearby Thai restaurant for dinner and it was quite nice actually. After that a few of us went to try and head up Sky Tower, the highlight of Auckland’s skyline.
Unfortunately the tower closes at 10:30pm on Sunday nights so all we got was a shot of the outside. Up to the Base bar for a few drinks and a mini-bike competition!
I really wasn’t much chop for the dodgy miniature vehicles, losing my first round, but to Brian who came 2nd overall (2nd to Mel, also on our tour). After that heat I walked with Lauren up to where she was staying – quite away from Base, and uphill. After a friendly kiss goodnight I actually enjoyed the walk back to Base; Auckland is a nice cruisy place, even more so than Brisbane I think.
Back at the backpacker’s bar most people had gone to bed but Ryan & Mel, Meg & Julie, Victor, Brian, Jimmy and I stayed up until the bar closed and we were kicked out. On the street Meg & Julie (the cock-teasing dirty talkers) were keen to go out further but I didn’t want any of that so I headed finally to bed.

We paddled to Haruru Falls, near the end of the river and jumped out at a campsite for tea and cookies. Here I met a beautiful Alsatian dog who saved a boy’s life, a lovely little story I captured on video.
After the break we were back in the water (this time I swapped into a single) and we went and paddled under the waterfall – right along the rocks so as to get dumped on by the water, a pretty neat little trick.
Back downstream was hard going because of the incoming tide and offshore breezes, but Loz and I still managed a good deal of stuffing around as well. Kylie our guide was also really cool, giving us regular good ribbings and helping Loz and I plan our dunking attack on Steve and Jamie. Unfortunately that didn’t eventuate cos we were too busy playing around ourselves and got quite behind the rest of the group. All in all the kayaking was great fun, and something I wouldn’t mind getting to later on if the opportunity arises.

After a few of us help up the coach while we dried off and changed clothes, we were on our way to Auckland again. Just a little before we left I remembered I’d left my brand new watch on the big yellow bus from the previous day’s tour (I’d taken it off to go sand-duning), so Jo our tour host (not Scott the tour leader) called Awesome Adventures to give them the details of where to look for it. And so the awesome adventure of returning Tim’s watch began.

The next morning we were up early to go kayaking down a river towards the Haruru Falls. I went up the river in a double kayak with Steve, and it was good fun really. I tipped Lauren out of her kayak (well she was the most experienced of us) and spend half of the rest of the time dodging her.

I managed a few short hours sleep at the backpackers before having to get up for the start of the Connections tour. I caught up with Steve, and over the next hour or few managed to amaze/bore him with stories of Africa. Soon we were on the coach heading from Auckland up to the Bay of Islands for a couple of nights. The accommodation is quite good compared to what I’m used to – motel as opposed to hotel or campsite, and the food too is intensively prepared, so we eat really quite well.
The Bay of Islands is really quite nice, similar to the Whitsunday Islands, but cooler, with more (smaller) islands and only slightly less picturesque.
Steve and I got on quite well with a couple of blokes we met in Auckland – an Indian Kenyan from London called Ash and a Scot called Jamie. First night in Paihia we went down to the local Woolies (“open til 10”) and stocked up on drinks, then went round to the girls’ dorms and invited them over. Of course after a few girls came over, most of the group was sitting on our front grass on chairs from their rooms, and a nice quiet evening ensued.
I fell asleep halfway through the dinner, in Steve’s bed out the back room, with the idea of being woken in an hour or two when the others would bring back some chicks from the “great bar place” our driver recommended. Turns out the place was a rust old ship and quite crap and no-one came back afterwards so I slept through til morning.

In the morning we chose to do a tour up north to Cape Reinga on a yellow bus with a mob called Awesome Adventures. We stopped off to see a big 500yr old Kaori tree, drove up sixty mile long “90 mile beach”, making sure to pull over for the Mercedes that was half buried in the sand – that far gone in just over a month!
We stopped again a bit further up at a big dune for some dune-boarding. This involves trudging up a large dune with a body board each, and then throwing yourself off the top. This is all good, except on our day there was quite a strong offshore wind that stirred up all the sand in your face, clothes ad most nook and crannies you care to ponder. This made the experience sill fun, but quite unpleasant, so not something I wanted to do a second time.
Next stop was a beach (Taputuputu Bay?) for a swim though, so we got to tumble-rinse ourselves in the Pacific. The surf wasn’t poorly shaped, but there were some ridiculous rips so we had to stay in close so others wouldn’t follow us.
The pinnacle of the trip (or at least the highest/northernmost point) was the visit to Cape Reinga, the far north tip of NZ. The spiritual belief is that the dead spirits pass through the ground of the long narrow land up to this point where they leave through the branches and exposed roots of a particular really really old tree there, and find their way “home”. What else is cool about this place is that it’s where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea meet, and on our particular day, from the lighthouse on the cape, you honestly could see the different coloured waters (not from varying depths) and some white water foaming where the two met. A pretty cool sight to see – two large bodies of water colliding and joining, but not really mixing.
We turned to go home then, stopping off at a Kaori wood shop along the way. It was a pretty good day and our guide was great, I just wish I hadn’t left my brand new watch on the bus.

That night we went down to the nearby club strip for a few drinks. I met up with Nina, a Swiss girl I was chatting with on the bus tip, but ended up walking home with Lauren, and Adelaidian girl from our tour group.
It ended up being a really late night for a few of us back at the hotel though – we were up late playing stupid dirty-talk games with two of the more loser girls; terrible waste of time really, especially for someone in the throws of jetlag.