Day 13 - Saturday, February 4
As mentioned in my last post, I was picked up at 715am by the Kiwi Experience bus to head up to the Bay of Islands. Got up there by about noon and checked into the hostel. Didn't really do much the rest of the day. Finally had relatively fast internet, so I used the day to upload photos, get together the blog, etc.
Day 14 - Sunday, February 5
Most people who head up to the Bay of Islands also do a day trip up to Cape Reinga, which is the northern most point in New Zealand. On the way up to the Cape, we stopped by the Kauri forest. Kauri's are basically just giant trees - probably somewhat similar to the giant sequoias in the US. I'll spare you a photo of trees, but later in the day, we went by a place that makes all sorts of stuff out of the trunks of the trees, including this $55,000 couch:
From there we went to the giant sand dunes not far from the cape, and did some sandboarding, which is basically just boogie/body boarding down a giant dune. I probably would've been happy hanging out there for several hours more - it was a lot of fun, and a good workout as well, climbing the dunes.
We grabbed some lunch on the beach. Not a bad spot for lunch:
Then we headed up to Cape Reinga, which is quite a picturesque spot. I got a little camera happy up there. At the cape, the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, which you can see in this first photo:
After the Cape, we drove back to Paihia (where we were staying in the Bay of Islands) along 90 mile beach, which is a long straight beach that functions as a highway, because it's much flatter and straighter than the paved road. So it is actually the quickest way to get south from anywhwere around the Cape, but only accessible at low tide. The bus driving on the beach:
Day 15 - Monday, February 6 (i.e. Superbowl Monday)
Another early morning, as I had booked a dolphin cruise/swim that left the dock at 8am. -- I think most of you know I'm not a morning person, but the bus back to Auckland left at 3pm, so I couldn't do the afternoon cruise/swim. -- For those of you doing the math, the 3pm bus departure meant it left at 9pm EST on Sunday in the US (We're 18 hours ahead here). I failed to do the math when I booked the bus, so that meant I missed the second half of the Superbowl. But I didn't really want to sit around in Paihia another night, so I missed the Superbowl for the first time since I was old enough to remember stuff. And for the record, the first Superbowl I remember watching was 1988, when Doug Williams and the Redskins trounced Denver.
Anyway, the dolphin boat is designed as a cruise around the Bay of Islands with a focus on finding dolphins for dolphin viewing and if they aren't feeding, and aren't moving too quickly, and don't have any babies with them, and the seas aren't too rough, there is an opportunity to get out and swim with them. I got the impression that even though it is billed as a chance to swim with dolphins, the actual swimming only ccurs about half the time. With it very windy, and the water pretty rough, I wasn't too optimistic. We quickly came across a pod of dolphins, and it was really cool to watch the dolphins follow along with the boat and act very playfully - jumping around along all sides of the boat. The boat is designed so that you can get very close to the water, and I felt like I could've literally reached out and touched them on multiple occasions, but we were told that was frowned upon. The shortcomings of my crappy little point and shoot camera became obvious as I tried to shoot the the dolphins doing tricks, jumping out of the water etc. A fine example of my amazing camera work can be found in this shot, which with a better camera or better photographer, probably would've been a pretty good one:
More poor attempts at pictures of dolphins in the picasa album,
Sadly, they never left the open water where it was way too rough to get in. The Bay of Islands themselves were gorgeous - small secluded beaches everywhere, just a really pretty spot. Again I got a little camera happy, but I'll only force one of them on you:
After the dolphin cruise, I caught a little bit of the Superbowl before heading back to Auckland for the night, where it was another uneventful night, thanks in part to a long day and another early morning to follow.
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