Day 2 Auckland to Paihia

We arrived too late to pick up the Maui on the first night so stayed in a motel near the airport that looked like it had escaped from the Swiss Alps. No Austrians yodelling though. Being cramped on a plane for a whole 3 hours meant that you had to run up and down the stairs as loudly and many times as you could. It also meant that bedtime was 2 hours earlier. Why is it that children cant bring the bedtime forward by 2 hours - but have no difficulty waking up 2 hours earlier? Hmm...sleep deprivation from the start. I could see this coming back to bite me.



My aversion to being labelled as a motor home or caravan driver has not diminished. They are claustrophobic bubbles of family joy heightened by no luggage space and little in the way of aerodynamics. That being said, there was one notable strong point. If you sit at the front over the top of the engine noise, it drowns out the child noise from the back seat. You've gotta weigh that up now, don't you?



First stop. Auckland Skycity Tower. 328 mtrs of breathtaking height (or so the blurb said) and exhilarating fun - for those silly enough to bungy off the thing. We saw two hapless individuals streak past us and plummet towards their death. Tara was up for it. Bill wasn't. (Even if we called him a 'yaya', Gordo). Fortunately her spending money did not extend to the entry fee. I doubt her grandmother would have survived watching it. It took even less to intimidate me. The thing has parts of the floor that are glass (albeit several cms thick and as strong as concrete according to the sign). Watching my children laugh and jump up and down hard on that was enough to make me visit acrophobia.




After dealing with my fear of heights, we parted company with the grandparents and headed north to the Bay of Islands. A brief stop enroute for Bill to pop in and visit one of his teaching staff that is on swap with an Auckland school - whilst the children amused themselves in the park opposite. Tara attempted to validate her inclusion in the school long jump team for the district carnival (which she was unsuccessful at btw). The other 2 cant quite jump as well. Wrong genetics.



New Zealand is consistent, I'll give it that. Green grass and windy roads. Then more green grass and windy roads.



A bit more green grass and a few windy roads later (in fact all afternoon of it) and we arrived for the evening in the Bay of Islands (Paihia). The campsite was situated at Haruru Falls - we arrived just on dusk so I just managed to get a photo without having a tripod handy. (Wouldn't have been so worried about getting a pic if I had realised we'd see about another 10 bigger waterfalls...)