The Land of the Long White Cloud

So I made it to New Zealandlast week and it's been pretty busy since then. First I headed upto the Bay of Islands which was pretty cool. I did a bit of snorkelling at a place called Goat Island then the next day headed up to Cape Reinga which is the northern most accessible place in New Zealand. The Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean here and apparently sometimes you can see the two currents meeting, but not when I was there...Then we headed down 90 mile beach, which is pretty cool as you're just driving along the beach and through the edge of the surf. Not very safe to go swimming there though so I just paddled. It's actually not 90 miles long. It was used as a cattle run doen the island and they thought cattle moved at 30km a day so as it took 3 days they decided it was 90km long.But no. It turns out the cattle were slow and it's only 64 miles long, but as Australia has an eighty mile beach they wanted to keep the longest beach so never changed the name.
The next day I headed out on a jet boat to "The Hole In The Rock" which is a hole in a rock that we went through in teh boat and span round in which was kind of fun. THen I jumped on a ferry to take a quick look at Russell whcih was pretty much the first european settlement in New Zealand. Apparently it used to be a bit of a hellhole (their words not mine) but now is a pretty tourist town, nice old buildings but a bit dull. Also headed to Waitangi where they signed the founding document of New Zealand in 1840 and had a look round the treaty grounds and also they have a big maori canoe there which was cool. It was only a 3 day trip, so was a bit rushed but it was good to get up there before heading down south.