Bay of Islands Tour and Waitangi Treaty Grounds

This morning we woke up pretty early at the marae. Since we had stayed up late the night before, breakfast was running a little late so we threw around a rugby ball on the lawn until breakfast. Stu, our coach driver taught us how to correctly throw the ball to get the right kind of spin on it. It was harder than I thought- I was so temped to throw it like a football! We then had a wonderful breakfast, and the Maori performed a goodbye ceremony to us before we got on the road again.

We arrived in the town of Paihia, where we boarded a cruise ship for a tour of the Bay of Islands. The tour was about 4 hours long and we spent it going past a bunch of gorgeous islands and learning about each of them. Most of them had little towns with boats offshore, and each island had a unique story of its history.

The typical view of the islands on our cruise- be jealous, the whole country looks like this!

The furthest island we went to was home to the famous "hole in the rock". The hole was created by a fault in the rock that was widened into a cave by the wave activity, and eventually worked the whole way through the island to create a hole. Apparently, the hole keeps getting bigger because when storms create huge waves, the water gets funneled through the hole and erodes it even more. There is another cave forming the same way on this island that will soon break through to be another hole.

The hole in the rock; you can see the other cave that to the left of the hole

Me on top of the boat in front of the hole in the rock

The conditions were stable enough for us to drive through the hole, which was pretty awesome. Apparently if you get dripped on, it's good luck... and I got dripped on! We went back through the hole and continued on the tour to Cable Island. Here, we stopped and got off the boat for about an hour and had our first opportunity to swim on the trip. It was a little cold, but I went in anyway. I had to get a swim in the first chance I got! The boat came back and we finished out the cruise by heading back to Paihia.

We boarded our tour bus and headed to Waitangi, and the Waitangi treaty grounds. This is where the treaty between the Maori and the British was signed. We toured the grounds and saw the largest Maori canoe ever built, and a mast that contained the current NZ flag, the british flag, and the old NZ lag before the treaty was signed.

Largest Maori canoe

The flags

We left and headed back to Paihia again to our hostel to check in and eat dinner. This hostel was pretty cool and was almost like a little resort hotel. There was a pool and a hot tub and a little outdoor area to hang out, which was a nice place to eat and have lecture. That night we explored Paihia and went to a bar called the Salty. It was karaoke night there so we tried to see how many people from our group we could convince to do it, since the winner got a $100 bar tab. A few people sang, but Trevor did this amazing rendition of "Escape" by Enrique Iglesias... and he won!

Trevor interpretive dancing while singing karaoke

It was such an eventful night that we came back to the hostel and crashed to get ready for our big day tomorrow.