After the excitement of the caves we drove back to Auckland. We checked into our ‘basic’ hostel after dropping Lydia at the Heritage Hotel Auckland!
New year was lots of fun…..we started off with a quick drink on the harbour and then hit the Ice Bar where you go into a bar made of ice and drink vodka (temps about minus 6) – no different to a night out on the Toon but we loved it anyway (and you got to wear a coat). That was a lot of fun but the 2 drinks that you had to consume in the space of 25 minutes (max time you could spend in the bar) were quite enough!
By that time Simon (guy who we met on the Africa trek) and his mates were in town and we met up with them for a few drinks on the harbour. We had so much we stayed there all night and celebrated the beginning of 2009 with garlands round our necks and jugs of beer. It was fun and there was some dancing to be had – the only thing was we could not see the 2009 fireworks as these went from the Skytower which we could not see from the harbour.
On New Years day we had to say goodbye to Karen and Lydia (allbeit with sore heads) we had a nice lunch in the sunshine then waved them off. The rest of the day we just chilled out, had dinner in Parnell and moved Catherine to the hostel with us.
Our last day in Auckland, before Catherine had to get her flight, saw us visit the Museum (again) and have a peek up Mount Eden we then dropped her off at the airport and were sad that there was only now 2 of us again.
We decided to head to the Coromandel to put our feet up for a few days and spent one day sitting in the sunshine in Thames and then we headed up the Coromandel and back down again having a good look at everything. We stopped at Hahei beach for lunch and a bit of a relax before heading down to Waihi Beach where we met up with Simon and his mates at their ‘luxiry’ Kiwi bach! Unfortunately, we had gatecrashed some of the guys last nights in NZ (they live in Ozzie) so we were introduced to some fun drinking games (with me being the only girl there). Anneke came to see us the next day and we spent it sunning ourselves on the beach. I t was really good to catch up with her and Simon.
The next day we headed over to Ohope beach………..
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.