Pi-, Pah-, Pie, Here?

When you are travelling, you have to be a "tourist"-tourist at some point. You don't have to always follow the beaten track and flock to the place that are in every travel guide, and you should always try to explore your location on your own a bit. Just wandering around in a strange town, randomly taking a bus to nowhere special, getting a bit lost, that's how you make the greates memories.
But still, some things you need to do, so I was a "tourist" last weekend, and will be again this weekend, when I'm going to Rotorua and Hobbiton.

Xandra and I went to Paihia. Another volunteer we met in Auckland, Steffi, recommended it to us. It's a small town at the Bay of Islands. For some reason, it took us forever to remember the name and how to pronounce it, which made telling people where we were going difficult. Pi-? Pa-? Po-? And it is almost pronounced like "Pie? Here?" with an englisch accent.

We got up early on Saturday morning and ate breakfast on a bench at the harbour. Skilled as I am, I dropped a piece of bread on my knee. It looked as if I fell and scraped my knee.
Then we went on a boat tour through the bay.

The boat on the left was ours

The boat tour was incredible, we saw so many beautiful places and gorgeous beaches. Feeling 20 knots on your face is also great, even though it was cold.

Yes, I did the Titanic-Thing

These rocks were formed by vulcanic activity

We just dropped off one of the crew members to get some mussles to cook, and got to try them on the boat! That's what you call fresh!

We stopped at this island for lunch, and walked up a hill with an awesome view

Oh yeah, we saw a bunch of dolphins

A dolphin-baby! That was the reason we couldn't swim with them, but still nice to see a little one!

The famous hole in the rock. We actually went through there!

An old lighthouse and a cool rock-arch

At night, we went kayaking.

Pia, Elisabeth, and our tourguide Ben in front of a rainbow while kayaking

A Shag-baby

Lot's of Shags nist in this tree

The lighting was bad, since the sun set right behind the Waterfall

It is possible to get behind the waterfall on a Kayak, and we tried. It's harder than it sounds! We managed it after flipping the boat.

Someone flipped their kayak... well it was both our fault. At least the water washed out the jam-stain from my trousers

Xandra after purposefully showering in the waterfall and accidentally taking a bath in the river

On Sunday, we only had a few hours until our bus left, so we took some walks and I went swimming, even though it was a bit chilly.

When we were walking to the viewpoint, Xandra jinxed me: I kind of stumbled.
She: "Don't fall!"
I: "I didn't"
"Not yet..."
Hey is that a redwo-
I fell
I somehow twisted my ankle in a ditch and scraped my knee. It's not the first time. But now it looks like I dropped a piece of bread with strawberry jam on my knee.

Underwater Selfies are hard