I've been trying to put up pictures from Paihia for FOREVER, and facebook keeps crashing, so that, and the departure from said place, has made me VERY unwilling to blog. Plus the sheer amount of stuff that happened....
Paihia is a town on the mainland but in the Bay of Islands... guess what's in the Bay of Islands. Yeah. Islands. We - Rachael, Pree, Paurakh and I - took a four-hour bus to get there.
The first night, when we arrived, it was raining like mad! An absolute downpour. We were starving and had only snacks we'd brought - apples, pears, hard-boiled eggs, bread. So, in the pouring rain, we went out to Salty Bar. Rachael and Pree had rain jackets, but Paurakh and I got SOAKED! We meant to get a pizza, but beer is sort of like bread, so we made do (my lone beer lasted me all night, and then I actually think Rachael finished it off). We danced a lot! Showed the kiwis how it's done! For some reason there is a pole in all Kiwi bar/clubs. As in, for pole dancing. At the Globe, people actually do it, but at Salty, it was mostly Paurakh swinging around and yelling. I watched some rugby and watched some guys play pool.
Day 2: We hiked to Waitangi, where the Waitangi treaty was signed, which is the basis for most Maori-white relations. There was a visitor's center/explanation thing, but it was expensive, so we decided to keep walking. We hiked up to Haruru falls, through soo many different atmospheres. We felt we were in the middle of nowhere, but we passes a lot of people, and at one point we passed a house! Please look at the pictures on facebook. We passed the river with big branching trees, filled with nesting birds. Deep forest overflowing with ferns in all colors. Swampy grasslands with different-colored waving reeds. Cattails taller than me. Huge leaves bigger than a dinner platter, with giant droplets of water on them. Then the mangrove forest, which at first looked muddy and gross, but then we saw little crabs in the mud, and the trees went on forever. It was so quiet.
The falls themselves were short, but thick - you could see that the rain had swelled it to about 2x normal size. They were the color of chocolate milk. We took the "short cut" home, which often involved us walking in the gutter alongside the road - you know, with grass and flowers all around us. We stopped to get groceries, and that night Pree and Paurakh made Indian butter chicken. It was delicious.
That night we went to the beach in Paihia and stargazed. It mostly involved me putting my camera on 30 second exposure and saying, "No one move! No one breathe!" and Paurakh taking pictures of us with the FLASH on!!
Day 3: We kayaked! Pree and Rachael in one and Paurakh and I in another. By this point, Paurakh and I had become buddies, so I don't mind saying that he was a lazy bum, and left me to do most of the paddling. Rachael and Pree were a good team and were even able to go through the mangroves, but Paurakh and I tended to run into the trees... ooops....
Oh did I mention that we landed on one of the Islands, pulled up our kayaks and stripped down and went swimming? It was awesome. The water felt so good after kayaking in the sun.
Unfortunately after I changed back on the mainland, I accidentally left my shorts behind (I was wearing pants).
So, we'd left some of our stuff in the safe in the hostel, and the owner left without her cell phone, or any return time, or telling anyone where she was... Paurakh and I (unwillingly) stayed behind to get the stuff, while Rachael and Pree went on (buggers). We were able to get a later bus that night, as classes started the next day, and it actually even worked out well, because on the bus we met Josh, a really cool Australian who works for ABC (Australian Broadcast Corp…. not owned by Disney!). He was in NZ picking up tapes and had decided to come for a few extra days to go swim with dolphins in Bay of Islands (which he did, and Paurakh was jealous, because he wanted to do that instead of kayak). That night Rachael and I went out for dinner with Josh; we talked about Aussie culture. Thus ended the epic weekend. :)
... every time I try to edit this, the text gets bigger....
nice blog ERIN
ReplyDelete-Paurakh