Saturday 29 June
Unfortunately on that evening we had a terrible night due to next door deciding to play loud music at 2am. It was so loud things on the bedroom sides were vibrating with the bass, it was such an awful way to be woken up that Liam thought he was dying! The feeling was still there at a reasonable time in the morning too. I banged on the wall and Liam told me off saying it wouldn't accomplish anything then somehow, god only knows, managed to go back to sleep again. I spent over an hour awake trying to occupy myself in the kitchen and living room and by 3am I decided to venture onto the balcony to shout across. I heard somebody else shout from another apartment at that point so left it, but 15 minutes later it was no different so I went out and told them to turn it down. It went down for all of 5 minutes before turning up again so I went out and shouted which seemed to do the trick. By 4am I was going to sleep again. 8am came along too soon, with liam making us breakfast and a cup of tea. He decided he wanted to try and burn some papers with his details on about 5 minutes before leaving and lit the BBQ. It ended in him putting it out 2 minutes later full of panic due to a lot more smoke than expected and a lot more smell!
After various issues due to lack of preparation we ended up catching a taxi to the airport. It took 20 minutes from the city and as check- ins go ours went fairly smoothly. We had a burger at hungry jacks which is basically Burger King, and waited about an hour longer than planned due to a delay. That was fine though, as was the flight although noisy and a bit cramped I think we both napped a little while. After the 3 hour 20 minute flight we arrived and declared all of our food in the likelihood we were checked and fined. That took maybe 15 minutes extra time but went smoothly. Once through to arrivals we went online to figure out where we were going, and were greeted by an awful email from our landlord. He had been a bit of a pain the whole time, not fixing things that needed to be fixed etc. he had come round to check the apartment the day before we left, and signed off the. One forms claiming he was happy everything was in order and happy to release the bond. Now he was blaming us for a crack in our kitchen side, which was there when we moved in. We knew for a fact he was lying about the whole thing, even if he hasn't realised it was there when we moved in he most certainly would have seen it when he signed our bond. Anyway we emailed him and told him in no uncertain terms it was a load of nonsense and we would be following it up with the relevant authorities. We tried hard not to let it ruin the excitement of being in New Zealand too much and went to find a mode of transport to get to our hostel. It was a comfortable 40 minute drive in a shuttle bus, and although dark it was great because it felt just like being in England! I don't know how to describe it I guess it was just smaller and had an atmosphere to it.
We arrived at the hostel at perhaps around 10pm, all the offices were shut but we had notes left for us with codes for the doors and keys. Our room was like an out house kind of thing, small but enough for us, a double bunk bed and a electric heater...which was definitely needed because it was freezing! The toilet and shower was shared with another room just outside and were clean and nice enough to use. We hadn't eaten for hours so decided to go out to find something despite it being late. Although looking for a snack we ended up finding a branch that was practically subway but with wraps instead of subs. We walked down the Main Street in ponsonby which seemed like it was the backpacker area, lots of bars and pubs and girls wearing nothing in the freezing cold and boys prancing about looking tough. We went back to our room and watched an episode of the Big Bang theory whilst eating our wraps before snuggling down trying to stay warm and have a little sleep before our early start.
Sunday 30 June
We woke up cold and extremely tired to our 7am alarm. We didnt manage to get out of bed until 8 despite having very little time to see the city. After having a quick wash, booking a taxi for later and locking away our bags we walked to find the bus. It was a fancy thing with a big screen at the front flicking the daily news and weather over and showing a map of where we were on the bus. It took about 15 minutes from ponsonby to the city, when we got there we decided to walk down the docklands area. It was cold but the sun was really strong, we could have done with our sunglasses.
Walking down we thought it seemed a little bit Liverpoolesque, and found somewhere along the harbour called jack tar for breakfast. We checked emails there and had another from Daniel saying he didnt really care where we were in the world and was going to be pursuing what happened to the counter further and with holding money. It put us in a bit of a sad and angry mood for all of 10 minutes, but we wernt going to let him ruin our trip. After Liam looking into the whole situation a little on the Internet and looking on the map to try and figure out where exactly we were going in our van today, we set off again to look around. We saw harbour bridge over the water, some people fishing, nice pathways and parks, and walked over a big temporary structure designed by some students. We spent a long time walking around the main city shopping for the best exchange rates and a sim for the phone. The city was nothing amazing in all honesty, especially after living in melbourne. It was just like a standard English place with not much to do or see and nothing particularly remarkable about it. We enjoyed the walk round because it reminded us of England, it even started raining which we both enjoyed. Walking around in our rain coats ducking in and out of shops selling very posh cakes,macaroons, gelato, fine wines. We walked all the way up to the sky city which was a steep hill up to the big sky tower that looks like the stratosphere in America. We watched people abseiling off it, and also went inside to have a little look around at the casino and dining areas before leaving. We wernt really bothered about going up and it would save money for the better stuff anyway. We went across the road for a drink at esquires which seemed to be almost like their version of a costa or something before heading back to the bus. We then got a taxi,who despite it being booked in the morning didn't have a clue where we were going or how to get there, he had to get a map out and look. But, he got us there safe and sound, where we were greeted by the friendly staff at wilderness motor homes. They were behind so we were kept waiting for around 45 minutes over our pick up time but we were given the keys to our new home so we could look around and get aquatinted. By the time the girl was ready to see us we had completely unpacked so it was actually quite helpful. We loved our van from the start, it's small but big enough for us. We have nice kind of suede seats that convert to a bed, all the storage underneath and ontop for bags, clothes,food or whatever. A gas stove, sink, foldable kitchen counter, fridge, microwave, kettle, toaster, shower and toilet. It's wonderful! Despite us not minding about the wait the girl gave us a bottle of wine to apologise and sorted us all out with the paper work and the boring stuff. We hired 10 DVDs to watch on the tv and borrowed a couple of books, all of which we return at the end. We then went shopping for food before starting our drive. We hadn't really known where we were going before the morning and even then it was kind of hazy. We just kind of drove up the two discovery highway for about 2.5 hours in the dark so we could start the next day in the kind of area we wanted to be in. Unfortunately we missed out on the scenery and some of the stop offs like wineries and orchards for example on the way up but it was great all the same, as I mentioned before we feel its reminds us of England compared to everywhere else we've been since we left. That and the amount of stars we could see in the sky was beautiful. We arrived at Whangarei Falls, booked into an electric hook up at around 8.45 and I had the first shower in our little nugget. We had some food and a little look at the maps before settling down for our first night.
Monday 1st July
It was a mostly good night apart from us both being unsettled from around 6am due to it being very cold. I had such a weird dream with Derek Shepard in it from greys anatomy, he was getting me to swap tshirts with other people for save the children charities.
At 7am the alarm went off and I put our heating on but we didnt get out of bed until 8 because it was so cold. We had porridge and tea, packed up and sorted the van which took a little while with it being a fairly small space but we will get the hang of how to work round each other in no time.
After liam spent some time in the computer room trying to read up on our rights with the issue we were having with our landlord, we walked to whangarei falls. It was like the Downs banks times 50, like an old world England. The water in the rivers and streams was a bright blue, and there was a water fall surrounded by mossy trees. We got sprayed a tut by it then spent an hour or so walking through forest areas, over wooden walkways in the canopy, through field type areas with small lakes and streams, some with rope swings over them. Unfortunately we had to get back to the van to be off the campsite for a certain time so had to cut it short, by the time we got back it was getting warm.
We went up the coast past ngunguru, tutu kaka, whale bay, matapouri, up past towai to kawakawa through very winding roads, lovely rolling hills and views. We walked over some beaches looking at all the beautiful little shells, walked up hills to see for miles and to top it off it was a sunny day. After all of the walking Liam had a nap in the car until we stopped off at kawakawa to go and see the special public toilets there built by what we think was a guy from Sweden but I'm writing this days afterwards so our memory has failed with that. The toilets were really cool, it was built a bit higgledy piggledy, with lots of different coloured tiles and melted glass. It was quirky and hard to describe really but Liam took some photos of the men's so we have them to look over at some point. We sat in a cafe with a drink to use the wifi so that Liam could try and sort out our landlord issue, he managed to Skype the bond authorities to explain the situation, but we also had an email from the landlord basically saying he wasn't following it up anymore because he believes in karma. What that means is he figured out he wouldn't get anywhere with it and decided not to go through the trouble! What an idiot.
Liam drove rest of the way to Paihia where we stayed the night. On the way we stopped a few times to look at the sunset which was bright and deep pinks and purples. We stopped at waitanga holiday park which was overlooking the sea, and there was a campervan there with a little puppy who kept coming over to play, he was so cute. We watched a DVD (the divide...a very bizarre one), had pasta and just chilled out for the evening.
