Bay of Islands to Cambridge

So here I am, yet again well behind on the blog updates. Catch up time. After leaving Auckland (now sometime ago) I headed upto the Bay of Islands on the Kiwi bus. Whilst there I went around the place with a lad from Birmingham and tried to see as much of the surrounding countryside as possible. Unfortunately the weather was pretty rubbish so we decided not to bother with taking a pricey boat trip around the islands themselves. Instead we took mountain bikes from our hostel and explored the surrounding countryside which, when the weather improved, was lovely. Whilst walking to a nearby waterfalls on the first day we met a guy called Frank from the US. This guy was nearly 80, had broken his leg just over a year ago and had one or two hip replacements. Despite this, he hiked along at lightning pace over some rather tough terrain whilst at the same time telling us his life story - quite a character.

A few days later I returned to Auckland and decided to take a seperate bus to see the Nixons (family friends) in a town that was about two hours south of the city. Whilst leaving the hostel to catch the bus I was in a shop to grab a drink when a girl walked in who looked familiar. It turned out to be a girl from the year above in school - small world and all that!

Whilst in Cambridge I was kindly taken around by Colin and Val to several places - including a local pub in the town where Colin and I sampled a fair few of the local beverages. Some old boys propping up the bar heard that I had played bowls back home so I was asked to play for the local club on the sunday which turned out to be a good day (after I regained a bit of form on the green). Cambridge is a nice little town that has a bit of old time charm about it.
On the Saturday, I met up with a lad who was another Welshpool ex-pat who is working on a dairy farm in a nearby town. So we met up and had few beers and talked for ages about 'the good old days' at school. This town turned out to be 'Hobbiton' of Lord of the Rings fame.

So all in all it turned out to be a nice introduction to life in NZ, and I was glad to see a few familiar faces from back home too.