Top bit.

Your token 'it's etc etc miles to such and such a place' signpost.
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Bit of a well-trodden day trip this up north but well worth the demanding effort of sitting on a bus for a day. One of many companies (Northern Exposure tours I think) takes the punters up to the very top of the north island so you can see where the Tasman and Pacific ceans meet - with slightly choppy consequences. You can't eat up there as apparently it's a sacred spot where dead Mauris take the last flight north to wherever the dickens they came from. It isn't a problem to drink lots of lager judging by the number of bottles in the bin and accompanying drunken Kiwi's however.

What the top bit of New Zealand looks like.
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On the way there's a fragment of Kauri forest to look at, the pioneers of which did a splendid job of removing all but a few of them. Now they just dig up the fossilised ones from the old marshlands (now fields) and turn them into clocks/spinning tops. If there's a better way to enjoy a thousand year old tree I want to know about it.

On the way back, we had lunch in a secluded cove where there was dolphins swimming round in the surf. Not content with ruining perfectly good tuna nets they then come and steal all the fish from the chaps fishing from the beach. Vermin. From there we piled back on the coach for a bit of sand-boarding down some very steep and unforgiving dunes which was great fun. The highlight for me was watching one top-heavy lovely bounce down the slope, skim across the stream at the bottom and then grind to an undignified halt upside-down in a reed bed.

No I didn't go in to swim with them, the water was fucking freezing.
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After that, it was one of the more unusual bus journeys I've taken along 90 mile beach going through the waves/jelly fish/sunbathers (maybe not the last two) back south to Paihia. Some tool parked their 4x4 inadequacy-phallus in the middle of the off-ramp so we had to loop round and hit it at a funny angle. All was going well untill the back end of the bus hit the ramp and sent me (sat at the back of the bus) into orbit, which gave me a sore head and jiggered the silencer. Not content with suffering a coach with flatulence all the way back, the coach driver also saw fit to punish us with the hits of UB40. Then we stopped for chips and made the coach smeel like Bridlington.

Sand boarding piste.
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Although it doesn't sound it, I really did have a lovely day.