Tauranga Central Backpackers

... prizes at the end.

Rain, rain and more rain. What is it? Day 5? Oh well...

Yesterday we went grocery shopping and had a fantastic lunch: greeen lipped mussels (they're the local variety and CHEEP and huge - 2$ a kilo), baguette, black olives, beetroot salad, ham, quiche, tomato, cottage cheese, and yeah, I think that's about it. Delicious! It reminded me of France. The only thing missing was a bottle of wine, but I'm not complaining.

So i arrived here and its gorgeous, i love it, My new hobby is walking along the beach listening to my music and looking out to sea, sounds silly but its very theraputic.
I got work Kiwi picking, which was hard work and i only had to do it for 2 days as the season ended, but even after that my back was sore hehe.
So now i have a job waitressing at an Italian place ...

After a beautiful ride through gold and green sheepland to Hamilton, its a 2 hour wait at the i-site for my NakedBus to Tauranga. I ask a group of girls whether they think I should prebook a ticket (nah) and we end up talking for a while. They are American students studying in Australia. They also eat only PB and J, ha ha. I spot a boy from Raglan Backpackers and plop down next to him. He is 19, from Uruguay.. specifically, some place that translates to "the point of ...

... This morning we got up bright and early. I just can't leave the internet behind so I shot off some early morning e-mails to some former coworkers to be rebuked for spending too much time on the internet... It was 7:00 in the morning and I was up early for our 7:30 bus! For Maryellen: Kristen is reading Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose right now. I was told to go play with some hobbits and kiwis...ironic because one ...

11 Feb The next few days the weather have turn for the worst, showers are expected through the weather forecast. New Zealand is a country you can expect to experience 4 seasons in a day and even you do not believe in god but you must trust the weather forecast in NZ. A morning shower goes off just in time as I was heading towards town to change in IRD posting address. It turn out I just have to call them up and update the posting address when I ...

... I want the only cost to be labor. I am hoping to build a free house...More on that later, we shall see. But all that is behind me now, I am off and running, I got a ride from the father of the farm to Cambridge, where I was supposed to meet a bus to go up to Auckland, at least that was the plan. Instead I got a ride to the airport to meet the father of the farms parents at the airport before going to the bus stop. The problem was. I ...

... beach and then have a BBQ at the hostel. We have bought a nice lot of food. There is Kathryn a 28 yr old, English, Euro economic and German degree holding fitness instructor who is not sure what she wants to do with her life. Kathryn's traits include; a blood hound style sense of smell, excellent general knowledge (good for pub quiz's and crosswords), packing skills (her bag is of normal size but she runs to 9 pairs of shoe's and multiple clothes), a ...

... at the ruins of the factory that once mined the sulphur but that had been destroyed during the last eruption. Apperantly the volcano doesn't spout lava when it erupts, it spouts large boulders and mud flows. The factory had survived in perfect conditionuntil the last erupion destroyed it. We the made our way round the crater looking at the various steam spouts until we reached the lake in the middle of the crater. It is filled with rain water but the ...

... people to bath in it. Some of the early 20th century treatments looked pretty gruesome, sit in a bath of sulphuric acid spiced with radium and have an electric current passed through you (no thanks). And finally the story of the Tarawera volcanic eruption in 1886 which killed a hundred or so folk and nearly wrecked Rotorua for good. Next stop the skyline skyway and luge, a ski-lift like gondola which takes you up to a hill ...