Decks of Paihia

... so we saved it for the next day.

They prepared a lovely dinner for all of us, steak, salad, pasta sausages, all kinds of yummy stuff. After dinner we went night kayaking super fun, kinda scary and very cold. By the end of all this it was nearly 11:30 and time for bed, Well, bed time for those who didn't drink heaps of tea.

The breakfast bell went off at 8 am. Had the best porage of my life and great conversations. The sun was up, bright and warm ...

... My favourite was along the roadside by a small shop in the middle of nowhere - "Last Cheese for Miles". We didn't stop.... Carol liked one outside a butchers shop - "Home Kills Processed". We tried to imagine this in the UK..."I've got this spider, weapon of choice a rolled up newspaper. What can you do for me?" Cold here, even though the skies are blue. We move on to Tahiti tomorrow, it's a hard life, this one.....

... really good. We were all rather worn out after such an exciting and strenuous day so watched another film before bed. 16th April 2009 We had most of the day in Paihia today as we were not departing on the bus until 3pm, but had to check out the room at 10am which was a pain. This meant we couldn't do very much as we didn't have a room to change in so we decided to stay around the hostel and watch films, taking a short walk in the afternoon before the bus departed ...

... when describing the scenery but again it was 'awesome' although I have the horrible feeling we're getting used to it. Anyway, after a very long drive we couldn't have been more disappointed to see the B&B we were booked into for 4 nights. A 'too far to walk' distance out of town, down a suicidal driveway (not joking and hard to negotiate sober!) and really naff. A downstairs apartment with two bedrooms suites; one ...

... see them so close up. We left the dolphins and headed out of the bay to the " Hole in the Rock". When we got to the rock the captain got us to all sit inside as he said there can be quite a swell as you approach the rock. we slowly entered into the hole and crept through to the other side. There was another boat waiting to follow us through so we couldn't hang around too long. The captain once again asked us all to sit down as it ...

... out for a stroll and to take in the town and make the most of the sunshine. We headed back to change before dinner and took full advantage of the hot tub at our hotel. Dinner that evening was a real treat. We had weighed up all the restaurants in town on our earlier walk and Simply Seafood seemed to be the Daddy so we headed there. It was a great decision - the place was packed and so we had to wait in the bar for a while and have a couple of drinks (what a shame!) before ...

... Visitors centre I saw a video explaining all this and then took a guided tour of the grounds by a nice, but rather slow maori named Vern. We saw the worlds biggest wkw (canoe) made of three enormous hollowed out kauri trees in 1940 for the signing centenery. We passed Hobsons Bay (where Govenor Hobson arrived with the treaty) and walked to Mr Busby's house, who was sent from Sydney as a representative of England to negotiate and live amongst the maori. We also went ...

... the Greenpeace flagship that had been sunk by French government agents in 1985 in Auckland harbour. She was raised and towed to this site, off the 'Cavalli Islands' and sunk as a marine 'reef' in 25 metres of water. On the hilltop above the harbour is the Greenpeace Memorial to her sinking and in memory of the crew man who was killed at the time. We dropped to the seabed and she sat intact on the bottom, a perfect wreck. Moving on the bottom from stern ...

... our car had air conditioning as it was soo hot! We were dieing. We had to make a quick stop to change into our bathing suites we were so hot. Also, just to add to the heat, it just so happened that we decided to road trip on Easter Friday...so the roads were soo busy. Haha in fact, so were the gas stations! We had such a terrible experience at one! We had just left the city when we saw a sign saying expect delays, construction. So, like ...

... and sightseeing in the rain is not so nice. The first night in the car was not the best of experiences either - we ended up parking the car on a layby on a smaller road and it was raining, making it a bit noisy... hmmm... is the car bedroom such a good idea in the end? The windows were all steamed up in the morning!

The next day we drove up in the Kauri forests on the Western Coast. Kauri are native trees of NZ, massive tree trunks with girths (radius) of more than 10 ...