First Couple Days in NEW ZEALAND!

Hi Everyone!!

Well I arrived in New Zealand on Sunday evening and right now it is Tuesday night...and boy have we already squeezed a lot in!! Sunday Becca, Laura, Emily, Kate and I landed in the airport around 5pm NZ time. At this point, Kate went off to do her own travelling, while the rest of us got a ride to our hotel in Auckland. Our hotel is an amazing 2-bedroom suite with a kitchen, huge living room and a balcony! It also has 2 gyms (yes, of course i've already hit them up) and a roof top pool and hot tub! The weather here has been partly cloudy and about 65-70 so not too bad!

Monday (yesterday) we decided to start off with a little tour of Auckland so we got a ticket to an on and off tour bus that takes you all around the city to the main hot spots and you can jump out at anytime and explore and then hop on the next bus that comes around. We walked all around the main street (Queen Street) and did some window shopping and then we got back on the bus and were driven to an amazing lookout spot where you could see the whole city and all the little islands around it.

Tuesday (today) the plan had been to get picked up at 9am to go skydiving!! However, when we got to the lobby, we got a phone call saying that our pilot called in sick and we had to reschedule our jump to tomorrow. At first we were pretty bummed but we decided to not let the day go to waste, so we took a cab down to the airport and picked up our rental car a day earlier than we had originally planned. I was nominated to be the driver and it was pretty weird at first!! Probably the most confusing thing of all was that the blinker and the windshield wiper functions were switched, so every time i went to make a turn, I would flip on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker!! It was actually pretty amusing. Driving on the left side of the road was pretty tough at first and rotaries were a little confusing but I definitely got the hang of it.

The first pleace we decided to drive to was called Mt. Eden which is Auckland's most famous volcano. When we first saw it, we thought it looked more like a grassy hill, but once we got to the top, we saw the HUGE crater and then it started to look more like a volcano! The view from up there was incredible and since we had all packed lunches, we decided to have a picnic on top of the volcano. It was a great start to the day.

Here you can see the crater at the center of Mt. Eden and the city of Auckland in the background

Laura, Me, Becca and Emily before our volcano picnic!

Next we decided to take a road trip to a place called Piha Beach. It was by far the most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. The beach has black sand which was so unusual, and right in the middle of the sand were these huge rock formations that were absolutely breathtaking. I climbed up the rock (there was a path...I'm not that adventurous) and the view was incredible! The ocean was an amazing shade of blue/green and there were all these mountains and hills surrounding the water. We stayed at Piha for the rest of the day and then it was time for the drive home. I probably should have mentioned before that the drive to Piha beach was the most insanely hilly, curvey and narrow road I have ever driven on...nevermind the fact that it was my first time driving on the other side of the road!!! I wish I had taken video because it was unbelievable and I was pretty much holding my breath for the entire 30 minute drive up and down "scenic road." The way back seemed a little easier...maybe because I was more prepared that time...but in any case we made it back alive without any damage done to the car so I was very pleased with my driving perfomance! Here are a couple pictures of Piha:

This was a view from a lookout over a cliff that we stopped at to take pictures

An awesome picture taken by Laura!

After doing a handstand in front of the big rock, I decided to climb up and check out the view from the top!

And this black sand message goes out to everyone reading this blog!!

When we got back to the hotel we hit up the roof deck pool for a bit, then came back and ate dinner and watched a movie. So I would say that for a group of girls who had their plans pretty much thrown out the window, we made the most of our day!! Now I'm about to go to bed and hopefully the next time I write I will have actually jumped out of a plane!!

LOVE YOU ALL,
Lauren