Paihia

I just woke up from a 3 hour nap. I had the biggest idiots in my room last night. They all decided to get wasted and go to bed at 4am then get up at 6:30am for the Cape Reinga day trip. I hope their bus breaks down.

So speaking of Cape Reinga, the northernmost part of NZ, my day trip was pretty cool. We had awesome weather and it was a great way to start off my stay in the bay of Islands. As usual, our bus driver for the trip, Auto, was absolutely mad and I questioned whether or not I should trust my life in his hands. And as usual, I just shrugged my shoulders and stayed on the bus. We stopped at the Kauri forest on the way up and saw these huge trees similiar to the redwoods in CA that, I believe, are now protected so they don't go into extinction. We drove up this crazy little dirt roads to get to a sacred Maori burial ground. This is where the Cape is located and it's where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. You can actually see where they meet, instead of the waves crashing into the shore and the bottom of the cliff, both oceans' waves crash into each other (it's kind of hard to explain without all my hand movements to show you what I mean). This part of the trip was my favorite, it was absolutely gorgeous... actually, I think the picture that I currently have on my myspace account is a picture of the Cape. After the burial ground we headed to a beach to have lunch and to swim, then we jumped back on the bus and as we were climbing a huge steep hill, it broke down. We jumped on other buses going past and still continued on with the trip. Next we went to these huge sand dunes and went sandboarding. If you've ever been to Jockey's Ridge in the Outerbanks, NC then it's pretty much the same thing. Although I think the dune that we were sandboarding down was alot steeper then the dune at Jockey's Ridge... or maybe I've just gotten old and fat and and I can't run up the dunes like I used to! I just went once down the hill on a boogie board and I got completely covered in sand. It was in parts of my body that I didn't know existed and I absolutely hate sand on me... not as much as I hate mayonnaise, but it's right up there. After a failed attempt to remove all the sand off me, I jumped back on the bus and headed to 90 Mile Beach... the liars, it's actually 64 miles. We went digging for mussels in the sand and cracked them open right there and ate them. One girl looked at me as she was cracking the mussel open and she goes, "Oh no, are these still alive?" and I tell her yes, then the mussel moved in it's shell and she freaked out, threw it into the ocean and goes, "I can't kill it!" The whole time I'm thinking to myself, well it was probably better that you did eat it because now it doesn't have a shell on it's one side and it's going to die anyway, but I just laughed at her instead. We drove down the 64 mile 90 Mile Beach then headed back to Paihia and stopping for fish n' chips on the way home.

The past few days here I've just been laying on the beach and have been pretty useless. My friend Phil that I met in Queenstown got here the other day and it's been cool to have someone else to hang out with. There are also people who I traveled with in Kaikoura so we've been hanging out with them a bit as well. Today Phil and I went on a jet boating trip all through the bays and islands and to this place called "the hole in the rock".

(check it out here: http://goaustralia.about.com/cs/nznorthsights/l/blpicbay5.htm)

It was a pretty rough trip getting out there and we were flying over these huge waves and hitting all these big wakes. We went over one wake and I landed so hard on the seat that my sunglasses flew off my head and one of my flip flops went flying on the deck of the boat. I didn't even realize I lost my sunglasses. Phil looked at me and was like wait, where are your sunglasses? I was all, awww man I lost ANOTHER pair! But luckily they just flew on the deck of the boat and I got them back. I landed so hard on the seat that I whacked my lower back out of line. Awesome. It'll adjust in a day or two but I'm not going to lie, I'm a little sore right now! It was a pretty cool trip, a good way to end New Zealand... no I take that back, a good way to end New Zealand would be going to the $3 Japanese shop again!

I leave Paihia on the 7th (today is the 5th) then I'm in AKL for a night then it's over to OZ to see my mom! I am so excited to get there to see her. I am pretty bummed to be leaving NZ because it's so awesome here and I could definitely settle down into a normal lifestyle here. But, Oz will be a whole other experience in itself, so it's all pretty bittersweet. I actually can't believe I only have a month left... someone is going to be very depressed when they come home!

I may not write until I hit Sydney... so check back around the 9th or 10th to see what mom and I are up to! G'day mates!

NZ Time: Monday, March 5th, 5:25pm
Philly time: Sunday, March 4th, 11:25pm