Last full day of the holiday where I am not travelling back home. We got up for sunrise on The Rock. We ate breakfast and then sailed a bit so we could go snorkelling. It was my first time snorkelling ever. Wow is all I can say. I wish I could do it all the time. I saw some Sadagers Wrasse and some branded Wrasse and an absolutley massive Eagle Ray. The wing span on the thing was about 4-5feet wide. Lots of other colourful fish too that I don’t know the names of. No spongebob unfortunately :(. We had lunch on Roberton island and I went sea kayaking. On the way back we ate some raw sea urchin eggs and this part of a mussel called bubblegum (raw). Yummy actually (I can see you getting sick Sue)
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Archive for the 'New Zealand' Category
Had a nice lie in due to Prohibition in Paihia. We strolled into the town and caught the ferry to Russell. I bought a lovely ice cream, had a few beers and bought a kiwi (called Russell incidently). At 5pm we boarded ‘The Rock’. The Rock is an overnight boat on the Bay of Islands. It’s a car ferry that has been converted to a house boat. A couple run it and it’s has a very chilled out relaxed atmostphere and the crowd with us was very nice and friendly. The had a shooting contest at the start of the trip to break the ice with everyone. We had to shoot a duck that was tied to the back of the boat with an air rifle. It may come as no surprise to you that I won this contest. You can take the girl out of Tallaght but you can’t take Tallaght out of the girl. It was difficult enough though, I am used to guns of the sawn off variety 
;) hehehehe. A small group of us went night fishing for snapper. I caught the first fish but he had to be thrown back because he was too small. The fishing was fantastic. I caught about 5 in total and only one was big enough to keep. Murpho caught the biggest one. We had them BBQ’d for dinner. The taste was amazing.
We did a day trip up to the very north of the north island to Cape Reinga today with a company called Dune Rider 4X4. They have these cool 4X4 seater buses with small groups on the tour guaranteed. The pick up was 7.30am. A ford transit van arrived at the hostel and the driver had some stupid excuse that the actual 4X4 bus was missing a part and not fit for the road. We had no choice but to do the tour in the transit van. They obviously overbooked for Easter d Weekend because two other 4X4 buses left from Paihia the same day. The tour itself was very good, first was a visit to a Kauri forest, then up to Cape Reinga to see the meeting of the waters. The Tasman sea and the Pacific sea meet on a bank, the waves come from different directions and cause this cool effect in the sea and you can hear this loud crashing sound. Next was a drive down a quick sand river to this enormous sand dune for some sand boarding. Yes I did my first ever extreme sport and got dumped in the sand. I came off the board pretty badly because I wouldn’t brake and ended up rolling about 6-7 times and then eating sand. I hurt my shin and my foot but I was ok. We drove down 90 mile beach then and as we were looking for shell fish this freak wave came in and got the van and resulted in us getting stuck in the sand. The van had to be towed out by a 4X4 bus. hehehehe (pictures are hilarious). On the way back we went to Mangonui for the nicest fish and chips I have ever had. Bluenose fish freshly caught that day. When we got back to Paihia for beers we discovered that all the bars were closed. They close on Easter Sunday. No watching the gp for me, thankfully I had beer in the hostel