My first views of New Zealand from the air.
We arrived at the airport and Chom Poo Moo immediately started getting into trouble with the guy at customs!! 
Up early the next morning I went on a free guided tour of Auckland and got some lovely views over the city from Mount Eden - my first extinct volcano.
This volcano crater at the top of Mount Eden was the scene of a brutal Maori murder when two tribe leaders met here under a truce flag but then one of them killed the other - as a result it was cursed by the victims tribe and it is said if you walk on here misfortune will follow you for a long time......not that I am superstitious but I decided I was too lazy to walk down there anyway!!
The view from One Tree Hill (yes it is a real place and not just the name of an American TV show) - the island in the back is Ranitoto Island - Auklands youngest volcano at about 600 years old - as the guide pointed out we have castles older than that in the UK!! There are loads of hills in the city which are extinct volcano's - the worrying thing is they do not know when or where the next active one might pop up......
Ok you know you have arrived in New Zealand when one of the first sites your guide takes you to is the base jump from the Sky Tower - 192m drop at a speed of 75kph - one person on the bus even got to do this for free (normally costs $200).
There was also a free walk over the Auckland Harbour bridge where we could watch those brave enough do a bungee jump - as much as I like to be adventurous though I have never fancied doing a bungee jump and watching one close up didn't make me change my mind - well for now!!
I met up with Andrea and Jay in Auckland who I had met in the Outback in Australia and Andrea and I decided we would hire a car to tour the North Island together for a few weeks and Jay was going to join us for the first week as she was on a tighter timetable - so the girls were studying the sundial here to help plan the tour!!!
Andrea and Jay practising their Maori war dance - well I hope it was the war dance and not the mating ritual!!
A young busker in Auckland was making lots of money from all the female travellers who thought he was cute - one to watch out for in the future...
We took the ferry over to Waiheke Island for the day which has beautiful beaches and scenic views back towards Auckland. Auckland is known as the City of Sails as there is a sail boat for one in every three residents! Mark you would love it....
I met up with Lee San another one of the venturers from my trip to Sabah - whom again I haven't seen in over 6 years. She took me for an icecream and out to Muriwai beach where I saw my first black sand beach.
The main attraction at Muriwai beach was the colony of breeding gannets.
Chom Poo Moo decided she wanted to try out here musical talents at the Kauri Museum in Matakohe where we stopped to break up our first days driving. The piano from the Kauri trees which are huge and solid native New Zealand trees.
There was some unusual outfits at the museum from some colonial social function the early settlers had held.
So Andrea and I went out to Poor Knights Island just off the coast of Whangarei (no I have no idea how to pronounce half the names of the places I have been to here!). This is a marine reserve with two main volcanic Islands - the colours inside this cave were fantasitic.
Whangarei Waterfalls - just a couple of minutes from the hostel we were staying in.
Wasn't expecting to find a Thistle on my walk to the waterfalls.
I like this photo of the bee collecting pollen.
Next stop was the Bay of Islands - so called for the 150+ Islands in the Bay. We jumped on a Catamaran sail boat to go hunt for some dolphins.
And as you can see we got lucky - and got up quite close to a pod of about 35 Bottle Nose Dolphins. We weren't allowed to go swimming with them as they had some babies with them - but it was fun watching them play and they liked to tease the silly tourists on the boat by diving under the boat and popping up at the other end and were obviously having quite a laught at the tourists running from one end of the boat to the other to get there photo's!!
Whilst we were out in the Bay of Islands a there was a Tall Ships race - so we got to watch all the sail boats which despite the rain was good.
We also saw these guys out on there little mini sail boats.....
Chom Poo Moo enjoyed staying at the hostel in Bay of Islands as there was a resident Teddy Bear in the room for her to cuddle up to.
A designer art deco toilet - which was the only tourist attraction at one of the small towns we drove through!
A roadside picnic - oh the new addition in the photo is Simone from Germany who we picked up as a travel companion at a hostel in Auckland as she was going the same way as us for the first week.
So we couldn't tour around in New Zealand for too long before taking part in some mad activity - we went for the not too hair raising experience of Tubing through Waitomo Caves - pretty much we sat in the big rubber tubes and went through the dark cave and over a few smallish waterfalls etc.... good fun. We all had to jump into the water like the guy in the photo a couple above but (un)fortunately the group photographer didn't get us - and I am sure none of us looked as happy as this guy when we did it!!
The main attraction at the caves was the glow worms - this is obviously the official photo of the tour company as we weren't allowed to take our camera's - but it was pretty impressive going through the dark caves and following the glowing path of the worms - which in fact we were told are actually the larvae of a fungus nat - but the travel companies decided that less people may pay a lot of money to see the glowing nats!!
The kiwi's may be more reserved than the Aussie's but they do have a good sense of humour.Keep reading more to follow......
