Bay of islands
Wifi is one of these things that actually doesn't exist in New Zealand. If you want to tell people you're alive you have to buy a cup of coffee for a lot of money or buy a sim card with 3G which is just really expensive here. So, I've been travelling around New Zealand for 7 weeks now when I'm writing this. I'm sitting in a house outside of Cromwell where we have been working for a while and in this house they have everything, beds, kitchen, toilets AND wifi. So, I thought it could be nice to sort all of my material out now and show you what me and my girls have been up to.
After Whananaki we continued our journey up north on the east coast of the north island and after a couple of hours (distances aren't very long here) we reached Paihia and Bay of islands.
When we reached the town the sun was strong and the breeze was warm which gave me a real mediterranean feeling at the same time as the mountains gave me Philippine feeling and the forrest gave me Sweden vibes. This is a weird country in that way. It feels like a mix of all the countries and climates in the world in one country.
We stayed at a camping across the lake from the Haruru falls and from this campsite I went on my own to do a bit of trekking. I found this 3 hour trek (Waitangi track) which lead me through mangrove forrest.
We paid a lot (20 NZD) a night to stay at this camping which is way to much for our budget (which is approximately 0 per night) but that is just how it is at the most touristy places here.
The day after we got up early to pack our things and then we went to the harbor where we got picked up by a boat that took us to another boat. The day before we had booked the Rock adventure cruise (118 NZD) to see all the 144 islands that you can find in the Bay of islands. The cruise had a bunch of activities for us like snorkeling, kayaking, island walking and served lunch and these things occupied us for 6 hours.
The sea temprature was 19 degrees which is just like a Swedish summer sea temprature but seriously, when I got in that water to snorkel with the rest of the group the coldness cut me like a titanic experience and I realized that Mollie and Elvira did the ultimate thing when they stayed on the boat instead of going into that water (there wasn't even anything but weed to see). But why complain? It was really cool to investigate how long I could be in the water before my body went numb and the head ache got too serious. (You could rent a wet suit for 5 dollars but who can afford that?). I just really missed the Philippines at this time.
I worked up my body temp. with some sun and tea and then we went kayaking to an island where we did an island walk and then had some free time. We read our books on the beach and watched weird people swimming in the sea and then we got back to the boat to have our lunch.
I would give this tour 3/5 toasters just because it's amazing to go on cruises and not having any responsibility in activities or food making. Also the views from the boat were amazing. Like, really stunning. But I'm pretty disappointed about not seeing a single animal (no dolphins and no penguins and not even fishes??) and the kayaking was probably only for 100 meters to get from the boat to the beach. Not too impressive.
The other days in the bay of islands we just spent going around to different isolated beaches, cooking our rice on our portable stove and hiding it from the wind (here are we in action building a fort) and stayed on way too expensive campsites.
This is as far north as we went. After Bay of Islands we packed our tent and started moving our (not too fancy) car further south to celebrate christmas