Another catch up!

So after Rotorua we headed up to the Bay of Islands. This is in the far north of New Zealand, and is quite a nice place to see. There isn't a huge amount to do there, so we spent a fair amount of time walking around. We did a longish walk through some forest, and came across a mangrove forest. These are inter-tidal forests that become submerged twice a day. The trees have roots that grow up to enable the tree to breathe - a bit like a snorkel. We spent a couple of nights here, and then our tour finished up in Auckland. Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand, but not the capital. As cities go it is fairly average. We went up the sky tower, to get a good view of the city, and for $2 extra we were able to come up again later that evening. 

The following day we decided to do a harbour tour. This gave us more nice views of the city, which we were enjoying, and then the captain said that he was going to take us off course as he had been informed that there was a pod of orca near by. When we were in Kaikoura we were offered a whale watching tour for almost NZ$200. In the Bay of Islands we were offered a tour for around NZ$60, plus an extra charge if you saw dolphins. We paid $32 for the harbour tour, and got to see the killer whales quite close up. Needless to say we were very happy with this. There were quite a few of them, and we got to see them jumping and all. Pity I didn't manage to get a decent picture! However there is a picture of one of their fins below. 

Sunset over Auckland. 

Auckland by night

Hard to tell, but this is actually a killer whale or orca. 

Bay of Islands moonrise. 

Mangrove forest. 

Horuru Falls. 

Mé fein and Gollum. The picture doesn't do it justice, but the statue is fairly bad - it looks a bit more hacked out of stone, rather than sculpted.
This town is the closest town to the farm where the filming location for Hobbiton, and they are really milking that claim to fame. 

I was quite sad to leave New Zealand as I really enjoyed it, and found it so very beautiful. I also enjoyed doing the topdeck tour - we got to see a lot of the country in a short space of time, and it was nice to be part of a group. We arrived in Sydney two days ago, and in hind sight, we are lucky we left NZ when we did. The news of the earthquake in Christchurch, and especially all the pictures of the damage have quite shocked me. We stayed very near to some of the buildings that were badly damaged, and I feel so lucky to have escaped. While we were driving into Christchurch the bus driver was giving us some safety instructions of what to in case of a quake. Thank God we didn't have to use them. My thoughts are with the families of those who have passed on, and those who are still searching.