Auckland and the Northlands

Imagine our surprise at landing in Auckland and finding out our hotel was right on the harborfront and only a 2 minute walk to "party central".  No this is not Carolyn's neighbors but the "Cloud" which was built as the headquarters of the Rugby World Cup.  So we wandered through the pavillions and bought some nice Canada gear to wear to the game and saw the Press rooms; which we saw on TV that night.  The place was a rocking as the games were going on, as there was a huge bar there as well.  We took a ferry over to Rangitoto Island and hiked up this relatively young (600 year old) volcano and looked back at Auckland.

  After picking up our car rental and having a quick lesson on how to drive on the left side, we drove north.   We got to a small town called Paihia on the Bay of Islands (after stopping part way for a taste at a winery, of course).  We decided to hang out and took a "yahoo" boat (you know the kind that goes crazy fast and the guy driving it is a yahoo) over to "hole in the rock".  It was literally a hole in the rock as can be seen from the photo.  Along the way we saw a number of dolphin pods

 which would swim along the boat as we slowed down.  There were Canadian, Japanese and Tonga flags everywhere in this area as they had adopted these countries for the world cup.  We found out the Canadian team had been there the week before and we did see the Tonga team on their way to go fishing, since they were having a tough time at the cup.  We spent an afternoon touring some small (think 4-13 acres) wineries and have now headed south towards Rotorua for some more geeky geological sites.  Having some photo posting issues so will add those later.