Our First Stop

Our last day in Auckland had to be an early night as we had to catch our "magic" Bus tour North at 7.30am! Which we did, outside a huge hotel in the city we waited for our bus to come along and to our relief it did with a driver that looked stangely familar, to us and most others it appeared our bus was being driven by Mr Bean, but infact it was a Kiwi called Colin who all through our 4 hour journey to our stop was giving us comentary and telling jokes, it seemed the bus ticket was definatly money well spent! Our first significant stop was at Waipoua Forest where we were sent by colin down a short track deep into the forest and told too look out for "Tane Mahuta" or in English "God of the forest" we werent all that sure what to expect but when we got to our viewing spot the view was unbelievable, we were looking at a native tree (I know not that exciting) but the size of this thing was un real, it was triple the size of all other trees around and it was a Kauri tree which apparently has shaped local mythology for hundreds of years, cant wait for you all to see the pictures! After a short trip to the tree and a stop off for local ice cream - "Hokey Pokey" (which is vanilla ice cream with huge lumps of toffee in it!) we were back on the road and soon at our destination. As I said Laura and I were the only ones to get off at this stop and I can garuntee the rest of the bus were kicking them selves they hadnt, it was complete paradise. It's a small town called Opononi which was made famous in NZ in the 50's when a female dolphin made her home in the bay alone (unusual for dolphins to be alone) and it became very tame and aloud children to ride on her back and performed tricks for the locals. Unfortunatly dead now the storys still are strong in the area! Anyway we found our hostel set just back off the beach up a hill which was ideal as it gave us perfect views of the bay at sunset and they really are the most amazing views and although a very quiet place it seems just the perfect place to live, so relaxing and peaceful!PICTURES OF OPONONI WILL BE ON HERE ASAP TRUST ME!!

The next day in Opononi we headed down to the small jettie to catch a 5min boat ride across to the golden sands of the local beach and as we hopped off the boat we were given boogie boards which we used to sand surf down the giant sand dunes and end up in the sky blue sea, it was an amazing exprience which we both loved and we could have done all day! After we had spent about 2 hours sand surfing we just lay on the beach and admired the scenary of Opononi! Once we caught the boat back we spent the afternoon relaxing on the decking of our hostel in the sun and walked down the the little beach for a bit of an explore! We really didnt want to leave this perfect, virtually untouched bit of paradise, such an amazing place it just made us excited for what was to come! When we were set for dinner the next couple to move into the hostel came in, only from bleeding Romford!! So funny to hear about their travels and how different they think it is from home, just like we do!!