Got up bright and early, discussed the plan of action – we decided to shift our plans slightly and go back on the dolphin boat. We gave them a call at 7.30am and booked ourselves onto the early trip. This then necessitated packing up our things once again and checking out quite quickly, jumping in the car and winging our way down to the wharf.
The boat was there waiting, along with about 25 people so we hopped on and went through the same process as yesterday – finding seats up the top next to the Captain and being introduced to the crew by him (today’s Captain was actually one of the crew from yesterday). He said that again the weather was not good enough to go to the ‘Hole in the Rock’ but that we’d see where we could get to. He warned that it would be choppy. So we figured it would be exactly the same as yesterday. We were wrong.
Within moments of getting out of the wharf, the boat started rocking about frantically and rolling as the waves crashed underneath the boat. Not good. I actually felt so much worse than I did on the boat yesterday. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep so as not to feel so ill! Mike also felt ill and he had been fine yesterday. The crew were giving out paper bags, but I soldiered on with my attempts at ignoring the sickness through semi-sleep and it kind of worked. Once we were through the worst and had the protection from the islands, things settled down and we were feeling a bit better so I was able to open my eyes!
The Captain got onto the radio and heard where the other boats had seen some dolphins, so we headed over to there and sure enough, we came to two other boats and a pod of ten dolphins. As our boat pulled up, we could see the dorsal fins of the dolphins ahead, by the other boats. Then the dorsal fins suddenly headed in our direction and the dolphins frolicked about next to our boats, coming up real close. Apparently, they were more interested in our boat because it was new to them (it was the one on loan from Auckland), so they recognised the other boats but were inquisitive about ours. This was great news for us. Today’s dolphins were a bit more active than the ones yesterday, although again no Seaworld tricks, however a few did jump out of the water and splash back down which looked cool. We stayed there for a while, taking photos and watching the dolphins play.
When we moved away, the Captain took us back past the islands we’d seen yesterday and then went a bit further out to see if it might be possible to get to the ‘Hole in the Rock’. This meant that suddenly the sea became choppy once again; really choppy! I think several more paper bags were handed out and Mike had to go and stand on the back deck, I continued with my sea-sickness avoidance technique of eyes closed and pretending to be asleep! Thankfully, the Captain eventually agreed that it was too choppy so went back to the calm waters and round to the island we stopped at yesterday.
We had a bite of lunch and a coffee, before jumping back on board the boat and heading back to Paihia, this time stopping briefly at Russell to drop some people off and pick some others up. We landed back at the wharf and everyone seemed glad to be back on dry land! We were also pleased that we’d had a better dolphin-spotting experience.
It was time for another coffee so we headed to the cafe, only to discover that whilst we had been away, something strange had happened – the tiny town of Paihia had been taken over by line-dancers! It turned out that today was the first day of a Country Music Festival. The town was literally flooded with people wearing cowboy-esque outfits and by standing on one spot we could see four separate bands playing their country music in the streets. It was bizarre. The bands were surrounded by people watching and dancing, and because they were playing so close to one another, the different music blended into one sound. One bad sound! From the cafe we could hear much warbling and on leaving, had to fight our way through hoards of country music groupies, all singing and dancing along to the music! We were so pleased to be leaving!
We jumped in the car and followed the map to Kerikeri. It was only a half hour drive and was quite pretty as it followed the coast for part of the way. We found our way to our destination, a place imaginatively named ‘The Parrot Place’ and went on in.
We were greeted by a very nice guy who explained how he was originally from Birmingham, where he had owned a pet shop. As we went in, he followed us and casually handed us a bird each! It was rather amusing because the birds instantly started having a nibble on us. I had a grey cockatiel which was very cute, it promptly climbed up my arm from my hand, up onto my shoulder and onto my back and eventually into the hood of my top, whilst strangling me with my camera’s neck strap! It was very funny, then I was made to laugh even more when I noticed that the bird Mike had been handed looked uncannily like him – it had markings just like his beard!
We put these birds back and went for a walk past the different aviaries, looking at all the brightly coloured parrots and lorikeets, until we came to the walk-through aviary. The man had given us some peanuts to feed the birds in this aviary and as we went in, they all flapped about – they clearly knew that people meant food! Before long I had a really pathetic cockatiel sat on my arm, nibbling the peanut from my hand. I can’t help but love birds that look pathetic – this one had a bald band around its neck which, in my eyes, made it look adorable! We fed a number of different birds, whilst others busied themselves around our feet, so we had to be careful where we trod! Getting out of the aviary was a little tricky as a couple of birds were keeping really close to us, like they were trying to make a great escape by slipping out of the door as we went through it. We managed to get out and keep them in, so it was ok.
Once Mike had dragged me away from the birds, we started our drive back to Auckland. Again, it was a long drive and relatively uneventful, so we just chatted and spotted the ‘Jesus For Lease’ building again, which made me chortle to myself! Along the way we were passed by lots of rally cars, which was peculiar, we figured something must be going on somewhere. Again we went through the toll road and saw a sign with a web address where you had to pay (how bizarre – having to log on to pay a $2 toll with a credit card?!).
Eventually we landed in Auckland, where we went back to the hostel and checked in. We chilled for a bit, made some dinner and then headed into the city. We went to the Sky Tower and went up to the observation deck to view Auckland by night from up high. With all the lights flickering in the darkness, it was actually quite pretty. Unfortunately it was really hard to take photos because they obviously hadn’t cleaned the windows in a while. Nonetheless it was cool and made Auckland seem a little more interesting!
We didn’t really feel like going anywhere else and to be honest, I very much doubt we’d have found anywhere open, so we headed back to the hostel where we settled in the tv lounge with a couple of beers and the tv. From what we could gather from CNN, it seemed that the results of the election were creating a bit of a drama. We then flicked on the movie channel and spent the rest of the night watching more or less the whole of one of the LOTR films – I think it was the third one! Even though I have now seen these films several times, I still don’t really understand who everyone is and I still ask lots of annoying questions but thankfully Mike was accommodating and continued giving me the Ladybird guide to LOTR. I don’t think I will ever get it!
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