Sam and E-J's Adventure

At 8:30 am we were on the bus to the Bay of Islands in the North, excited that we were going to see some beautiful beaches. Immediately, we noticed the difference in the style of New Zealand buses compared to South America. Firstly, no food or drink was allowed on the bus, making it all feel and look immaculate. Secondly, the bus driver continually made announcements over the tanoy about places, who was getting off at what stop and any other trivial pieces of information we might like to hear. Our greatest highlight was when the bus purposely stopped halfway through the journey for a morning tea break. We absolutely loved this and took full advantage of it.

As the journey continued the weather started to deteoriate and as we looked out to the green fields and grey over cast skies, it reminded us so much of England!

By the time we arrived in the Bay of Islands the rain was torrential and after finding our hostel, we found a bar to sit in and have a beer, dwelling on the weather. Actually, only E-J could have the beer as poor Sam was on antibiotics.

After much deliberation, we finally got round to booking a boat tour around the islands for the following day in the hope that the weather might improve and ended the evening in a pleasant restaurant called 35 degrees South, which looked out over the ocean. The mussels there were ridiculously huge!

We awoke the next day to relatively bright skies and kept our fingers crossed that it would hold out for the day. The boat trip that we had organized was called the Cream Trip, which was once a boat trip that Captain Lane would do to pick up dairy products from lots of farmers around the bay. Now the boat delivers papers and other necessary items to the people who live around the bay.

Lunch was spent on the Urupukapuka Island. A beautiful bay with golden sand and blue water. We gazed out at the incredible view as we ate our typical backpacker lunch consisting of crisps and water!

Before we set off for Brett Cape we enjoyed an underwater boat around the bay to view the coral and fish. Due to the poor visability the tour wasn't too memorable but the shout from the skipper to an American tourist who was slow on getting on the boat of "hurry up love or I will feed you to the fish" had Sam in fits of laughter!

We then set off for the Bay of Island landmark known as Cape Brett, which has the original nickname of "whole in the rock".

When we got to the hole in the rock, the weather was beginning to get a bit choppy, so we couldn't go too close to it, but then a group of dolphins suddenly appeared with a couple of baby calves. The captain was sure they would come and play, especially since there was also a massive shoal of fish around the boat, but they suddenly darted off and the captain could only imagine that there must be a shark within the shoal and the dolphins had left to protect their young. It was fascinating to see something blue under the water attacking the fish, but no one was sure it was an actual shark.

When we finished the boat ride we decided to spend the evening exploring the quaint little town of Russell, which has the oldest building in New Zealand. This happens to be a mighty 200 years old...

After listening to a live band and having a bite to eat, we headed back to our hostel for a relatively early night, before heading back to Auckland the next day to collect our home for the next 3 weeks, a campervan.

Sam's comments: I wish E-J had reminded me to put sun tan lotion on! My face resembled the middle of the Japanese flag!

E-J's comments: This place is really something special. I would have loved to have seen it in the blazing sunshine, but we were lucky it didn't rain the entire time. The hole in the rock was pretty special and seeing all the dolphins was rather special too.