Back in Auckland

So, I'm all done with my trip up to the northern tip of New Zealand. I'm back in Auckland now, and will be here for a few days while I sort out where I want to go next. I wanted to head down to a town south of here and learn how to surf, but apparently they don't start lessons until November, so I can't quite go there yet. Darn!

The last few days have been fun and relaxing. After my last entry (lots of pictures, check them out if you haven't seen them yet!) I went out on a boat trip around the bay of Paihia, and went to a place called Hole in the Rock. Haha yeah, it's just a hole in the rock, but I won a 2-for-1 coupon at the bar a few nights before so it was cheap! It's a sea tunnel throught an island. Pretty fun trip though, the boat was really fast, and actually gets air off the big waves!

The next day I caught a ride with Ray and Conor, the guys from Ireland, and we went up to the bottom of 90 mile beach because they wanted to see it. Then we drove back down the West Coast to a little town called Opononi. It is so beautiful! Too bad there wasn't more to do there because I would have loved to stay more days. We only stayed one night there, and ran into someone that we had met back in Paihia. His name was Olaf and he's from Holland. In the morning we caught a boat over the harbour to the sand dunes there, and did some more sandboarding! These hills were quite steep though, and led right out onto the water, so you would skim across the top for about 20 feet before you sank. I didn't want to take any pictures though because I didn't want to ruin my camera with water or sand.

After we'd showered and stuff, we set out and drove down to the Waipoa kauri forest, and saw the biggest trees in New Zealand. Remember the picture I posted earlier of me hugging a big tree? Yeah, the biggest one in New Zealand is twice that size... It's 14m around the base! Absolutely huge. The pictures don't really show the size of it that well. We also saw teh second largest tree, and a group of trees called the Four Sisters, which grew up in a really small square. After the forest, we drove down south to a town called Dargaville, stocked up on groceries and drove out to the coast to a tiny town called Bayly's Beach. It was a quaint little surf town that was really relaxing. We ended up staying there for two nights because it was so nice! The only other person in the hostel was a guy named Jason who lived there, and he was really cool. So we had it to ourselves really and all we did was watch movies and the rugby world cup games! Unfortunately the weather was horrible so we had to stay inside pretty much.

So yesterday we left there, and drove back to Auckland where Ray and Conor dropped me off. They are only in New Zealand for 6 more weeks, so they are going a lot faster than I am, and I wasn't ready to head south yet. So my time with them is over and I'm back to rainy Auckland!

I'm trying another thing with the pictures because SOMEONE complained about having to click on them all... *cough*Ryan*cough* So here's a link to the latest ones I've put up from the last few days. Not many unfortunately, but a few more.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/polkadotskies/

Hope you all are well, and I miss you lots!