Mark and Nicola: Friday Sept 14/07

Well we've just returned from a few days up north exploring what there is to see. We've now covered off everything north of Auckland. Tommorow we will head to Whititanga, then to Waitomo Caves and Rotorua.

The northern trip was incredible, first we drove up to Piahia, stopping at parks and places of interest on the way on our first day with the 'magic' bus tour. We went to see an 2000 year old Kauri tree in a National Forest and checked out Paihia which is in the bay of islands. It's a bay on the east coast of New Zealand with 144 islands scattered throughout it. The town is small and very tourist based, sort of similar to Uclulet or Tofino. The day after we got up there we took another tour up to Cape Reinga which is at the very northern most point in New Zealand. The bus drove us all around, once again stopping at all the points of interest, explaining things and telling stories as we went. He took us to the lighthouse at Cape Reinga, and then down to hte Sand Dunes. The bus is a little higher than an average tour bus and actually drives right through a shallow river to take you to a particular spot on the dunes. Everybody piles out of the bus and grabs these special boogie boards. We walked up the extremely steep dune all the way to the top, then hopped on the boards and slid down, it was so much fun. Everybody was far too tired to walk up again twice, but me and this German guy couldn't resist another shot, so we went again. After the dune boarding the bus drives further down the river and right onto ninety mile beach (actually only 64 miles long), but still very long and straight. We then drive down the entire beach and pull off at the very end to drive into the little town for a snack. We then made it back to Paihia for one more night at the Bay Adventurer Hostel which was really nice. And now we are back in Auckland, getting ready to depart again tommorow.

Our tour guides have told us some great stories so far on the bus, which is a huge advantage of taking a tour as apposed to just a regular bus. For example,

There are a few dozen volcanoes all around Auckland city, the biggest one being Mt. Eden. One April Fools day a bunch of University Students drove to the top of the volcano really early in the morning with a truck load of car tires. They rolled all the tires down into the crater and dumped some gas on them. Then they threw a match in, and quickly took off. They immediately called into the radio stations and alerted them all that the volcano was smoking and was going to blow. 3000 homes were evacuated and the police were too afraid to go investigate it because everybody thought it would blow. It put the entire city into panic mode for a few hours until someone looked at the calander and realized it was april fools day and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. The students were never caught and are now local legends.

Dolphin swims are a popular activity for tourists to New Zealand. As most people know dolphins are very intelligent, and can detect the beat of your heart underwater. They are also very protective and have strong maternal instincts. When a woman is pregnant, the dolphins can actually pick up both heart beats, and will naturally try and protect the expectant mother. On one of the of the tours a young german backpacker went for a dolphin swim and the operator instantly realized that all the dolphins were surrounding the one girl. After the swim the operator told the girl that he's pretty sure she's pregnant and she may want to get a pregnancy test. She refused the idea and was rather shocked at the operators comments. Two days later she returned and told the operator she went to the store and got a pregnancy test, and it was positive.

New Zealand's number one industry is tourism, it is huge here. A large part of that tourism is adventure sports. Literally everywhere you go in New Zealand there are crazy adventure sports that anyone can partake in. There is SkyDiving and bungy jumping all over the country, along with many other insane activities, such as canyon swinging, zorbing (rolling down a hill in a giant bubble - sort of like a hamster ball), sledging (going over rapids and waterfalls on a body board), etc. etc. To encourage this form of tourism the government has made it impossible to sue for any kind of personal liability. This means that not only are the costs kept in check (lower insurance costs), but also people can do whatever they want. The guide told us many stories about how the operators will screw with cocky tourists thinking they can't be frightened by their adventure sports. One cocky American tourist figured that he'd done everything so he went on the Canyon Swing (a freefall followed by a large arc, all over a canyon which gives you 8 G's of brain numbing excitement). To prove this tourist wrong they got him to hold himself from a chinup bar while dangling near the canyon wall, he would have to let go in order to drop. To mess with him further they got a really hot girl working there to come to the edge and tell him he looked so strong and to do some chin ups for her. He proceeded to do as many as possible while dangling from the bar, until his hands started to sweat and he could barely hold on. Just as they knew he was about to let go another operator came behind him and snapped a branch right by his ear. The entire crew then proceeded to scream, "Don't let go, don't let go!, the safety line has snapped!!! whatever you do don't let go!!" Naturally he let go from pure exhaustion and believed he was plummetting to his death. Try that for scary you cocky American Tourist. Our guide advised us never to hide our fear as we will be targets ourselves.

Anyways, that's enough for now, off to bed as we've got an early morning and lots to see and do ahead of us.

Nicola and I infront of a 2000 year old Kauri Tree