Week one in New Zealand

Cathedral Cove
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13 hours after leaving Chilean soil, I landed in Auckland international airport! Because of the time difference, officially the journey meant I missed the whole of the 12th January 2009- hopefully I didn't miss too much...  I was welcomed at the airport by Andy and Pieta, a couple who were on my Budget Expeditions tour of South America.  I managed to wangle myself a couple of night's free accommodation with them and Andy's parents, and not only that but I also got some really cool free excursions with them too!  A big thanks to you both and your parents if you're reading this!

Spitting Giezers
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AuCkland

Within 6 hours of landing, and heavily jetlagged, I found myself mountain biking through a network of bike routes in a forest 40 minutes north of Auckland!  It was slightly different to Death Road in Bolivia: the track was very thin - only thin enough for one bike at a time;  there were slippery tree routes sticking out all over the place; the ground was mainly sand; and there were several uphill sections!  The ride was also a lot tougher than Death Road, especially without my glasses on, so I couldn't really see the tree stumps flying towards me; and also because i was on a bike that was too small for me!  I only stacked it once though (the same number of times as Andy, whose fall was hilarious), and somehow managed to stay on my feet despite the bike crashing to the ground!

Black water rafting and caving!
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A much calmer afternoon followed, taking in some of the sights Auckland has to offer.  It is actually the size of London, although only the CBD is high rise, and the population is only 1.2 million.  It is also home to the southern hemisphere's tallest building - the Skytower, which gives some awesome 360 degree views of the marina, the many volcanoes (all dormant) and the surrounding areas.  To see some of the best sights, however, you need to take a boat out.  Luckily, Andy's parents own a boat, and we even managed to get some fishing in there too!  The fishing was so much fun - we used kippers as bait, and managed to catch 9 decent sized Red Snapper. I caught 2 of these, and was mighty chuffed seeing as I haven't fished for about 10 years!  We also saw some of the scenery around the surrounding islands, with Waiheke being the best of the lot, with some fabulous beaches!

All set for mountain biking!
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After a brilliant fresh Red Snapper and chips for dinner (the best fish I have ever had!) I felt the dreaded jetlag catch up with me again, so I retired to bed early.  The next morning we headed to Piha beach, claimed to be the best beach in the North Island for surfing.  Not being a surfer (yet) didn't put me off from going in the sea (and losing ANOTHER pair of sunglasses in the waves!).  It was really good fun, and I managed to soak up some of the extra strong sun rays.

I then moved into a hostel in the CBD so I could meet up with a couple of girls from the South American tour for a night out and get prepared for the start of my Kiwi Experience.

First catch of the day!
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Bay of Islands (Paihia)

It was an early start to get the bightt green Kiwi Experience bus (slightly more tasteful than the yellow Budget bus!) at 7:15.  A 4 hour journey up to the North to Paihia in the Bay of Islands followed, with a stop off for a bacon buttie!  The Bay of Islands contains 144 different islands, and is one of the most beautiful places in the North island in NZ.  I decided to take a day trip on a boat to explore the islands, and there was also the possibility of swimmign with dolphins in their natural environment - something that not many people get the chance to do.

Auckland's CBD
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The first thing to say about the trip is that I was the youngest person on board by about 20 years!  There was a big Saga group and many older couples, so I had some very, errm, interesting conversations!  The trip was actually really good though, and we saw two big pods of dolphins who were showing off all their tricks!  They are so friendly and love interacting with the boats!  I actually got a great video of a dolphin doing a trick that I will put up on FB when I return.

Showing off!
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The islands themselves are fabulous, with cool rock formations and loads of vegitation, surrounded by bright turquoise waters full of sea life.  We stopped off on the biggest island in the bay for lunch, and there was a walk that you could do which gave absolutely amazing views of the area.  We also went through the famous "hole in the rock", which got us pretty close to crashing into the rocks due to strong winds!

The younger of the old group, and a few of the more adventurous grandads, had a bit of excirtement on the way back, where we jumped into a big net in the sea attached to the boat, and got dragged along for a while!  A great way to cool off!  Unforunately we weren't able to swim with dolphins on the trip, because they were all with their babies and it's against the law to swim with baby dolphins.  But it was still a great day out!

Bay of Islands
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Mercury Bay

After a night's stop off in Auckland we headed off to Mercury Bay, via one of the nicest beaches I have ever been on!  It was called Cathedral Cove, and it took about an hour to walk up and down a couple fo hills/mountains to get there.  The cove was actually used in the new Narnia film apparently for scenary shots!  There were limestone cliffs surrounding it, and one of the cliffs had a massive hole in it so you could swim/walk through to the next bay along (depending on the tide!).  Unfortunately we didn't budget our time very well and ended up only having 20 minutes to spend on the beach!

Luckily a few of us did get to go to another beach that night - yes I mean night.  We went to Hot Water Beach at low tide, at about 9:30pm, with a few crates of beer and wine to sit in our own natural hot spas!  You just need to dig in the sand and the hot geothermal river that flows beneath the beach fills up the hole with boiling hot water which you mix with the cold sea water to give a hot bath!  We managed to get a hole big enough for about 15 of us to sit in and stare up at the bright starry night - not a bad way to spend an evening!

Rotorua

Another day and another drive to another place - Rotorua, the home of natural giezers and hot mud pools.  I went on a tour to see hot things mentioned above and they were pretty cool.  The giezers were blowing on full throttle and the mud pool was bubbling.  But the place absolutely stank of rotten eggs (sulphur)!  There's not much else to tell you about Rotorua to be honest, other than the hostel we stayed in had a nice swimming pool naturally heated by the geothermal rocks beneath it!

Waitomo

After a morning of driving, what followed was probably the most fun 24 hours of my life!  We headed to Waitomo, famous for its massive network of underground tunnels all lit up by glow worms.  Feeling adventurous, I went on the "Black Abyss" tour, which was incredible!  The tour started with a 45 metre abseil through a fairly tight hole in the rocks.  We were then subjected to a pitch black flying fox down to the underground river!  We then had to jump with a rubber ring into the water from 7 metres up, again in the pitch black!  After all that excitement we had a calm half hour where we floated down the river staring up at the glow worms.  The water was absolutely freezing though, ok so not actually freezing, but it was foot numbingly cold!

We then preceeded to scramble around in the water to where the caves get really interesting - with many waterfalls, crevaces and horrible insects and spiders!  We had to squeeze through some gaps that were tiny (if my beer belly was any bigger then I definitely would have got stuck!), slide along half-metre wide canyons with drops of 5 metres below, crawl through streams over jagged rocks, and the most fun of all, climb up waterfalls!  The caves are all limestone, so the running water through the caves had created many foot- and hand-holes that could be used to climb the near virtical 10 metre waterfalls!  The trip took about 5 hours, so we were all pretty knackered by the time we reached the surface, but it was so much fun and I would have liked to do it again the next day!

I am going to wait to tell you about the remainder of my "most fun 24 hours" because I want to head to the beach and it is a beautiful day!  It involved jumping out of a plane from 15000ft though...

Hope all is good with you all,

James x