Vicky got up early this morning for her day trip, so when she left, I got up too and packed my things together. I checked out, put my bags in the ‘hobbit hole’ – a very small luggage area under a stairwell – and went to the beach where I found a bench to chill out on – my bus wasn’t due until 1pm. I just enjoyed sitting and looking at the sunlight highlighting the ripples in the water. It was an incredibly pretty view.
I wandered into town and went to a cafe on the pier, where I sat outside and had a coffee, again enjoying the view. Lots of seagulls were hanging around, looking out for any hint of a scrap of food or an unattended plate – they even swooped at plates which were attended! There was a lot of noise and suddenly a helicopter appeared out of nowhere! It landed right next to the cafe! It got so close, I could see the pilot really clearly! A few minutes later it took off again, really close to the veranda of the cafe and flew away into the distance.
With the helicopter excitement over, I made my way to the shops and had a meander around those, not a lot to see and I had already seen most of it the day before, so it didn’t take long before I was done. Still with time to kill, I headed back to the beach and sat on the bench in the sunshine, reading my book and enjoying the peace and quiet and the warmth from the sun.
When it was 12.45, I went back to the hostel, got back in the hobbit hole and retrieved my bags, before going back outside and sitting on a wall to wait for the bus. I hadn’t been on the wall long before I saw a terrifying large ant with white knees coming straight towards me. I thought to myself “Be brave, B, it’s only an ant and nothing in NZ wants to kill you”, so I stood (or sat) my ground, defiant – until, that is, he went off and came back with a load of his terrifyingly large, white-kneed ant mates. At that point, I surrendered and leapt off the wall!
Shortly afterwards, the bus arrived and a herd of us piled into it, including a couple of girls I had met before. This time, our driver was Scratch (apparently he has had a few knocks with the bus!) and he took us on our journey back to Auckland. The bus went back past the same hills and cows as I had seen along the way to Paihia! There was one thing I didn’t see before, it had me in stitches – it seems that it is quite common for buildings to be made out of corrugated metal (along with a lot of other things that seem to be made out of corrugated metal – they love the stuff) and often when the building is large, they paint big adverts on the roof, like the name of a company (I saw one Scout hut with a roof saying “This Scout Hut Is Proudly Sponsored By...” I forget the name of the company), anyway, we were going along and in the middle of nowhere was a big corrugated metal building and on its corrugated metal roof it said “Jesus For Lease”! Obviously, it must have said something else about Jesus, but they had then put the ‘For Lease’ sign over the top of that. Made me laugh anyway.
We arrived in Auckland and Scratch dropped me at the hostel. The new guy at the check in desk was useless and it literally took me a good twenty minutes to get done – he was trying to do too many things at once, serve three people at the same time and also didn’t seem to know much about what he was supposed to do. Eventually I was checked in and taken to my room – this time Room 5 (I had been in Room 2 with JJ). No sign of Nikky, so I got my stuff sorted and then made use of the free wifi!
Nikky arrived back a while later - it was super great to see her! We sat and chatted for a while, looked at all the things she had been buying (mostly presents, honest!), then sat about and did some internetting, more chatting, watching tv and Nikky packed her bags.
When she was done we decided it was time for dinner. Annoyingly, seeing as NZ is more or less shut 80% of the time it was tough finding somewhere, the choices being; kebab, kebab again, pub grub or Thai, so in the end we settled on Thai. This brought about small traumas over what to have, as neither of us are particularly knowledgeable about this form of cuisine. After a bit of help from the lady, we enjoyed a very delicious dinner indeed!
Back at the ranch, feeling full to the brim, but most satisfied, we got nice and comfy in our room, threw on our PJs, put the tv on and sat there chatting and internetting. Then Nikky set about booking her accommodation for Hong Kong. This was particularly entertaining as she started looking at and researching hotels at about 11.30pm, when I started watching Coyote Ugly on the tv, then another film and then I gave in at 2.30am, whilst she carried on looking!
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