Bay of Islands

"Green. Cow. Mountain." That is the name of my album on Facebook for my adventures whilst in New Zealand. And it was inspired by our trip to the Bay of Islands.

Not even 24 hours into our time here (here being the entire country of New Zealand), we boarded a dog bus (the mirrors look like dog ears; I am also known for calling certain buses space shuttle buses, just bear with me in my insanity) to take us on our first trip together. 

The road to Paihia was windy, with lots of mountains and cows, and I've never seen a place so green. No wonder if people want legit greenery they come to New Zealand for their movies and such. (Okay so I only know of the Lord of the Rings and the Shannara Chronicles, but I'm sure there's plenty of others.)
But anyways, yeah, cows. Like everywhere. Like lots and lots of cows. I was warned there were more sheep than people. I think those people were mistaken. Cows are where it's at. All different colored cows, but lots and lots of cows. There were some sheep, but many more cows.
So after a meat pie, a pineapple toastie, and a long bus ride later, we made it to Paihia. Once we were there, we went swimming and jumped off a floating dock (you can check out a GoPro video Allison [a girl on our trip from Loyola] made here). Then we went to Happy Hour, bc, legal.
The next day we got up early and after breakfast we went on a bus tour with a bunch of rude old semi-locals (more local than us but clearly not local if they're doing a tour with us). We went up to Cape Reigna, the northernmost point of New Zealand, and saw where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. We also saw a staircase made into a fallen tree, the only one like it in the world. After that, we went to a forest full of the fallen trees, where they also find lots of Amber. So being the super nice sister I am, I was gonna get some amber for my sister (bc ya know, her name is Amber), but it was insanely expensive, so yeah, maybe next time. We also went sand boarding down some sand dunes, then we swam in the 90 mile beach. See my sand boarding video at the bottom of this post. Fun fact: the 90 mile beach is actually only 65 miles.
Libby and I met Lydia the goat that night. First she licks, then she nibbles, then she bites. She was working on me for a while, but backed off before she got to the last step.
The next day, we went to the Treaty of Waitangi before heading back to Auckland.
On the way back, I had a totally wicked sandwich and we stopped for ice cream. My ice cream came with a lollipop and sprinkles and was cheaper than a plain one scoop! It also got me over 50 likes on Instagram, which is a major amount for me, so that's nice :)

Lol for taking so long to write this post, I certainly didn't provide many details. Oops. But pictures are apparently worth a thousand words (some more) so if you want more I guess you could check out some of my pics (there's a couple on my facebook but tbh not nearly as many as I took). 

But yeah,

til next time,

xoxo,

Tasha