Waitangi Day

This morning we got up at 6am to catch our first Kiwi experience bus at 7:05. The bus driver for the Kiwi Experience was a lot more friendly and cheerful than the ones for Greyhound, but then they are more than just a bus driver.

We have a Kiwi Experience pass called the Zephyr pass, which allows you to get the bus up to the Bay of Islands, back to Auckland and then hop on and hop at place round New Zealand. The Kiwi experience also guarantee your first nights accommodation at all major stops, and book tours and future buses for you, via your driver. Our driver, Jarrod, passed round multiple clip boards with the different things on where you signed up or indicated what you needed and wanted and then he rang up and sorted everything out.  New Zealand is smaller than Australia so most of the journeys are only 3-4 hours long.

We stopped at a little town at 8:30 for a food ad toilet stop, and then stopped again at 10:20 for a quick break to see the Whangarei waterfalls.

We got to Paihia, the town we were staying in at the Bay of Islands at around 12:30pm and checked straight in to the hostel. We are in an 8 bed room, that's split into two smaller 4 bed rooms, with an attached bathroom. 

We dumped our bags and headed out. It's Waitangi day today, which celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand''s founding document, so there was lots going on. We walked for about 20 minutes along the sea front and found the main area where the festivities were. There was lots of market stalls selling food and arts and crafts, a couple of stages, and there were some things going on with Waka boats, which are long canoes. We wandered around for a while, watched some Maori men drag the Wakas out of the water into a fancy shed and generally soaked up the sun. It is a beautiful area, with sparkling sea, tree covered islands and green hills.

In the afternoon before we headed back to the hostel we watched a young female dance group perform before heading back towards Paihia and the hostel around 5pm. 

We were planning on cooking dinner but one look at the kitchen soon changed our minds. Instead we went out for dinner.