Day 02: How I ended up in Whangarai

There was a big change of plans today. Everything was set up to go to Paihia (Bay of Islands) where I would be booking my diving trip for tomorrow.

As it turned out when I was talking to the Kiwi-Experience guide/driver and after checking for availability we decided that the best option for me would be for her to drop me off at a small village called Whangarai, and book a dive trip for tomorrow to Poor Knights, which is one of the top 10 dive sites in the world according to Jacques Coteau, then on my way back from the diving I would catch an intercity bus to take me to Paihia where I would spend the night and the following morning, on that following day I could go for another dive, first to the "Canterbury" (wreck dive), then a reef dive and when I come back from the dive I could catch the bus back to Auckland.

And that's how I ended up today in this village of about 50,000 inhabitants, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

By the way, something worth mentioning that I´ve learnt today is that over here in NZ, 'wh' is pronunced as an 'f' so 'Whangarai' is pronunced as 'fangarai', that's why after spending 20 minutes looking for 'Fangarai' on the map I just couldn't find it!, only when we finally got to the place and saw the road sign showing the name I put two and two together... funny enough, I've been told they have a place called Whuckmama... Not sure whether they can say it out loud with a straight face...

Anyway going back to my original story...Today I was picked up in Auckland at 07:15 in the morning...not a great effort since I was awake from 01:15 in the morning thanks to Mr jet-lag.

From there we drove to a tiny village called Warkworth for a quick stop to streach our legs. There wasn't much to see there but it was quite a pleasant little village.

Then we got back in the bus and it was time to book the excursions we all wanted to do. The guide/driver "Fly" made a few phone calls and after discussing the different posibilities we worked out our plan of action which is the one I outlined at the beginning.

"Fly" dropped me off at the Whangarai tourist office and from there I've managed to book everything else (accomodation in Whangarai and Paihia intercity bus from Whangarai to Paihia and diving trip with shuttle for Poor Knights). Then as it was still early in the morning I decided to walk about town

Then the owner of the holiday park where I'm staying picked me up and took me to my new home for the night

This time I'm going to enjoy a full "cabin" all to myself! :-)

Once settled I decided to go for a short walk to the nearby waterfall.

Not bad for an unscheduled stop, uh? It's quite a nice walk and goes all the way to the town centre.

Tomorrow, they'll pick me up and take me to Tutukaka from where the boat leaves for Poor Knights.

Tomorrow should be one of the big highlights of these holidays. :-)

Let's just hope my throat continues to improve as up to now...



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