bay of islands travel weekend...

Whew!  what an incredible weekend!  pre-apologizing because this might end up being a pretty long blog post.  so we left for the bay on Thursday the 12.  we piled into our rented vans and drove about 3 hours north...im very thankful for the shortness of this van ride in comparison to the 9 hour one we had going down to Wellington!  ok! so Thursdays activities:  drove down and made it to the town called Paihia.  Once we arrived, we got settled into our hostile.  Not gonna lie, this was my least favorite of the hostiles thus far.  it was on the dirtier side and at night the other backpackers were pretty rowdy and loud, making it difficult to fall asleep.  but whatever, we survived!  so anyway, after we got settled in, we headed over to the Waitangi Treaty grounds.  A little history background for you, the Treaty of Waitangi was made so that the Maori and Europeans could live together equally, and fairly.  Unfortunately, the europeans kinda cheated the Maori out of some of their rights...etc...its a pretty big thing still and people are still sore about it.  but it apparently seemed like a good idea at the time.  so after getting some cultural history in, we were given some time to go and explore the town for a bit.  here in New Zealand, most of the stores close anywhere from 5-7 in the evening!  super early i know, its something that is very hard to get used to.  so exploring the shops was difficult because most of them had already closed.  its a pretty cute town though, nice and picturesque and touristy.  on our way back to the hostile, it began to rain and got pretty chilly.  some of us were really looking forward to the hot tub that was advertised back at the hostile.  when we returned and were donned in our togs (swim suits) we headed over to the hot tub!  or shall i call it, the lukewarm tub.  it was gross as ill get out.  yet still Joy and i sat in there for a while out of boredom and practiced our chinese.  after having a delicious dinner of haystacks, we headed back into town for some DELICIOUS ice cream.  the kiwis do it right when it comes to ice cream, thats for sure!  I got maple walnut and holy smokes...it was heavenly.  after ice cream we headed back to the hostile and attempted to go to sleep...which once again was quite the challenge thanks to the party crew right outside out door.