Bridgewater Bay Apartments Paihia

... wir auf Delfinsuche - und es dauerte auch nicht lange als die Konkurrenz unser Schiff anfunkte,um den Ort, an dem sich die Tiere gerade aufhielten, zu verraten. Von ganz oben auf dem Boot hatten Basti und ich eine tolle Sicht. Mir faellt gerade kein deutsches Wort dafuer ein, aber es war einfach amazing! So grosse Delfine und so dicht und so viele auf einmal hatten wir noch nie gesehen! Sie sind sogar gesprungen fuer uns! Dass mit dem Schwimmen klappte dann ...

... on the dunes and got totally wet almost every day. Now we are kind of stuck in Paihia because the busses down south are full every day... that doesn't matter because its really nice here, except that we can't find a job. Now we booked the bus for Thursday and hopefully we will head south then and find some work there. Soon we will also put some new photos online. Bye until then! :)<br><br>

... from swampland and make many beautiful things out of them. The Kauri Kingdom was established after the two owners found a big old Kauri tree and made a staircase out of it. When you walk up the stairs you walk up through the trunk of the tree. They then built their shop around it and produce things like chairs, dining furniture, bowls, ornaments etc. It was all very expensive but understandably so. On the way back to Paihia we stopped at a fishing village for fresh fish and chips and ...

... per night share with 4). The weather is a balmy 26C and we're off to explore. A short ferry ride across the bay to Russell Island - in Maori -Kororareka -sweet penguin . When Captain Cook sailed Endeavour to Bay of Island s in 1769 the town was already an established settlement for the Maori. Later known as the Hell Hole of the Pacific - with whalers and sealers lookin g for onshore entertainment - Kokorareka is now the very epitome ...

... It's this naturally formed cave in a big rocky island sticking out of the sea, but it's gone all the way through and it's big enough for boats to sail through. We saw a few fishermen in a tiny rowing boat as we pulled through, and they held up the fish they'd caught. I swear to god, I thought it was fake - it was as long as your arm and twice as wide. "It's good fishing round here," our driver said solemnly. We arrived ...

... forward as we could think of no better place. After traipsing around for a while, we stumbled upon a back street chippy and decided to risk it for a biscuit - after all the fish was John Dory and the beer was cheap - they were awesome!! We then headed to a couple of bars popping into the local RSA fishing club for a few games of pool. We had to check out the fishing for Graham. The next day the weather was not too good so we headed to the market in the next town over which ...

... but they looked like they had sort of guilty looks on their faces. When we got back, we read in our travel guidebook that in this area of north New Zealand, it's quite common for rental cars to get broken into. Fortunately, Dolly was unhurt and we could say we survived the gangs of New Zealand. We decided not to drive all the way up to Cape Reinga but rather just take our time driving around. We drove up ...

... to swin even though it wasn't actually that cold! and then on to sandboarding (boogie boarding down sand dunes at about 45km and hour!) it was AMAZING!!! but so tiering getting up the dunes in the 1st place! Thursday was the time to do our dolphin cruise - the weatehr was perfect - i even go a little sun burnt =/ Thursday night was just full of crazy madness which had us laughing so so much and that wasn't even at the comedy festival that we went to when we arrived back ...

The long trip north.... We waved goodbye to Auckland fairly early to start the fairly long drive into northland. First stop was a small town called Warkworth, where I'd considered jumping off to explore the Kauri forest located there; one of the last dense populations of these magnificent trees left in NZ. But getting carried away with the spirit of the Kiwi Experience (ahem), I stayed on and we motored through. En route we were 'encouraged' to select an activity to ...

... t even get the whole thing in a picture. So we all took some pics and headed back to the bus, by this point it had started to rain, well we were in a rainforest I guess, so on we all got and the driver turned the key... and nothing happened, it happened a few times before the guy admitted defeat and headed out in the rain - he was going to walk to the nearest town. So we all waited. For 2 hours in a mini bus in the rain, it was lovely. By the time the driver came back and ...