Paihia - Bay of Islands

Today I left Auckland and headed to the "Winterless North", or so they call the northland of New Zealand. But more on that in a bit. The rest of my time in Auckland was rather uneventful; I woke up on Sunday to a huge storm outside, and it actually did not stop raining until seven at night. Determined not to let it ruin my last day, I decided to spend the day at all the museums I had been meaning to go to. I started at the Auckland War Memorial museum, Auckland's biggest, which is actually much more like a natural history museum than a war museum. There were some great Maori (native NZ population) artifacts, and the second floor focused mostly on Auckland as a center of volcanic activity. There was even an eruption simulation that I found terrifying and I don't even live there. There are all these public service messages everywhere about the volcano that will likely erupt in the next 50 years and how it could devastate Auckland, and it just didn't really seem to bother anyone. I found that incredibly bizarre since it made me nervous to even visit the place let alone live there, but then I remembered that Seattle is in pretty much the same situation, and everyone still wants to live there :).

After that I made my way downtown (in the rain...) to the free art museum. It was actually a great collection-- I particularly liked the modern works which generally don't do much for me. The rain finally stopped at around 7, just when I was headed back to the hostel to pack everything up.

Bright and early this morning I met up with a new friend, Felice from Holland, and we left Auckland on a bus up north to Paihia in the Bay of Islands. The drive was gorgeous; the landscape kept shifting from rolling hills and farmland, to coves and cliffs and beaches, to rainforest like foliage that made me thing we somehow ended up in Jurassic park. I was seriously longing for some sun after yesterday, and my wishes were granted when we got up to Paihia. A resort town, Paihia is left mostly with the locals in winter, but the sun was still warm and the water beautiful. We had booked a boat tour through the islands for the afternoon, with a chance to see dolphins. We set out on the tour and the views were amazing. I captured most on my real camera, but am including a few teasers below. When we got to the edge of the bay, we finally ran across two different pods of dolphins, which were amazing! They swam right under our boat and hung around for about 20 minutes. So cool!

After the boat ride, Felice and I headed back and made a quick dinner at the hostel. Tomorrow we are doing a full day trip up to the very tip of NZ, Cape Reinga, which will also include some sand boarding hopefully!

Photos:
1: Maori boat in the museum
2,3: Countryside on the way north
4: Bay of Island from Paihia
5,6: Boat pictures in the bay
7: Dolphins!