Bay of Islands

No uploads at this computer so no photos today, although today was fairly rainy. After picking up a fresh batch of people, many of whom seem very friendly, in Auckland we headed north.

This morning we had one of the best adventures of the trip. Our driver read a headline in the paper about a new expressway opening and decided to take the new road out of Auckland. The thing is: he didn't read the article to know that it wasn't opening until 2010. And he also somehow missed whatever road closure signs were up as we made it about 2 miles into a construction site (this is no joke). The workers gave us funny looks, but no one seemed to stop us until we just about reached the tunnel at the end of the site which would have put us back on the old road. I'm not quite sure why our driver didn't think things were a bit suspicious. Finally a construction supervisor came and told us to get out. After a tricky maneuver we switched sides of the road and headed out, only to find that the bridge on that side of the road was not driveable (and a concrete wall divided the two lanes). At this point we needed to head back into the construction site to find a break in the wall, but the bus and trailer were too long to turn around. So we backed up about a half a mile with a huge trailer on the back! The construction workers were all taking pictures of us. We were about to finally make it out and the supervisor told us that he would escort the bus at 30 kph. Our bus driver seemed to ignore this and start driving past him and then the supervisor got really upset and had a few choice words for our driver :) Finally made it out after about close to an hour. So it seems that this tour company doesn't have the brightest drivers.

We stopped at a very nice beach for lunch and I got in a nice swim. The water in the ocean is pleasantly warm here and also seemed to be less salty (and another person on the trip said that she heard that this was the case). We also got in a nice bike ride to a waterfall, but got rained on. This area is okay, but I doubt I'll return - it's a little touristy.

Tomorrow we have the opportunity to skydive and I just might do it if the weather is good just to get it over with :) And then I'll do nothing else too extreme so that my parents don't kill me :)

I also have everything booked for my trek down to Taranaki, including a night in Auckland, bus to New Plymouth, and a night in New Plymouth, so that's a relief. I also splurged and got a single room in the hostel in New Plymouth. It was only about 25$ US and I really want a night where I'm away from people, so I'm looking forward to that.

-Brian