First stop - Hahei

Saturday, May 1st. Today I started my bus tour of the north island on the Stray bus. This is like a hop on hop off bus but it also provides other services like making sure that there is a spot available in their hostel on the night that the bus is pulling in and the driver also books activities for you. They obviously get commission if you sign up to the ones they promote because the driver seemed annoyed when I asked about alternative accomodations.




We started the day by heading to the top of Mount Eden, one of Auckland's extinct volcanoes. This was the view of the city from Mount Eden.

We stayed in Hahei tonight. I was last off the bus and somehow got to stay in a small campervan and had the whole thing to myself. I was chatting with one of the girls afterwards and she was in a 9 person dorm.

The campervan was awesome. I took the double bed and made myself toast and tea. I even hosted guests in my crib.

After I settled in we went on a hike towards Cathedral Cove. Initially, we were only planning to go for a short walk, so not the full way to the cove. But then we bumped into Louis, an American on our bus, and decided to continue on. We started the hike pretty late so by the time we got to the cove, the sun was beginning to set.




This was Cathedral Cove. They recently fenced off the section to go through to the cove and put a sign up warning people of the potential falling rocks.




This was the other side of the cove. We decided to ignore the warning sign and go through. There were hundreds of shoe prints onthe path so I guess we weren't the only ones being naughty.

In the evening, it got really cold and the campervan didn't have a heater so I was freezing. I had to sleep with my thermals on and used two blankets!