Day 5- November 7th

So this morning, we were supposed to be going on the eco dolphin tour where we would boat out to find dolphins in the wild and even swim with them, however we woke up in the morning to the sound of thunder and steady patter of rain on the wooden terrace outside our room. No surprise, the cruise was called off. We were probably all silently praying for it to be honest. It looked pretty grim out there. We managed to get a bit of admin done that morning, bus and plane tickets booked and belated diary entries filled in, and then we headed out for the day. 

We didn't take any photos that morning, so here's a picture of what we could have been doing 

Paihai is a tiny seaside resort, so there's not much to do in grey weather, so I decided to take the crew for a walk. We were headed for a small lake near the waterfalls that we had seen when out kayaking. We walked along the sea front for a while and then turned off down a road. We kept getting honked by cars for some reason- we must have been doing something wrong. Maybe we weren't supposed to be walking there. New Zealander's definitely honk their horn a lot more than the British...

Bit windy

We had been walking for a while when suddenly the path next to the road disappeared. We didn't want to walk on the road, so we had to turn off down a little private track. We carried on for a while until we came to a fork in the road with a sign post that said 'Mary and Joe's place', 'Raso's place', 'Bee haven'. We went for bee haven as we didn't want to risk trespassing on private property, but didn't really find much. It was a bit of an anticlimax, but thanks for following along with the story!

Later looked it up on google and apparently this is Bee Haven

The sky was starting to look a bit ominous so we thought we better start heading back, and no sooner had be set off then the rains came. We briefly considering hitch hiking back to the town, as we only had one coat and a tiny umbrella between us, but the rain actually stopped very soon. However, it continued messing with us all through our walk back and couldn't decide whether it was on or off. 

We arrived back at the town, picked up our bags and then took off on the long bus ride back to Auckland, where we had a dinner date waiting, in the form of Mikael Ginai. Predictably, he was late, and then pulled up 45 minutes after the arranged time in his swanky Audi S4 with his girlfriend in tow. Anyway, it was a somewhat brief, yet very enjoyable evening and it was very nice to reminisce about the good old days and get some insiders tips on New Zealand.

Hi Mik